LIBRARY 

OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA: 

'Received       JAN-IS    1893 189 

^Accessions  No.  5~Cnr3p  .  Class  No. 


A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

ON 

THE  LABOR  QUESTION 


BY 

SIMON  NEWCOMB,  LL.D. 

AUTHOR  OP  "PRINCIPLES  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY" 
"THE  A  B  c  OF  FINANCE"  ETC. 


1  Strike,  but  hear11 


UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN  SQUARE 

1886 


Copyright,  1886,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  riglds  reserved. 


PREFACE. 


THE  following  chapters  owe  their  inception 
to  the  editor  of  the  New  York  Independent, 
in  which  journal  the  outlines  of  most  of  them 
have  recently  appeared.  They  are  now  recast, 
amplified,  and  submitted  to  the  courteous  con- 
sideration of  the  reader. 


CONTENTS. 


PART  I.-SOCIETY  AND  ITS  WANTS. 

TALK  PAQB 

I.  To  THE  READER 9 

II.  SOCIETY  is  A  CO-OPERATIVE  UNION  ...  13 

III.  OUR  COMMON  INTERESTS 22 

IV.  OBJECTIONS  CONSIDERED 80 

V.  BENEFITS  AND  EVILS  OF  ORGANIZED  AC- 
TION      41 

PART  II. -CAPITAL  AND  ITS  USES. 

YI.  THE  RAILWAY  QUESTION  :  ITS  Bia  SIDE  .  51 
VII.  THE  RAILWAY  QUESTION:  ITS  LITTLE  SIDE.  57 
VIII.  How  ONE  MAN  MAY  Do  THE  WORK  OF  TEN 

THOUSAND 08 

IX.  WAS  IT  GOOD  FOR  Us  THAT  WE  ALLOWED 
ONE  MAN  TO  MAKE  A  HUNDRED  MILL- 
ION DOLLARS  ? 79 

X.  THE  CAPITALIST  AND  WHAT  HE  HAS  DONE 

FOR  Us 91 

XI.  WHAT  CAPITAL  HA  DONE  FOR  THE  LABORER.  101 


VI  CONTENTS. 

PART  III.— THE  LABORER  AND  HIS  WAGES. 

TALK  FAGB 

XII.  VISION  OF  A  PURITAN  DEACON  .    .    .    .113 

XIII.  THE  ACCOUNT  CURRENT 127 

XIV.  A  TALK  TO  A  KNIGHT  OF  LABOR  .    .    .135 
XV.  ANOTHER  TALK  TO  A  KNIGHT  OF  LABOR.  144 

XVI.  How  CAN  ALL  GET  BETTER  WAGES  ?    .152 

XVII.  CHEAP  LABOR  AND  ITS  EFFECTS.    .    .    .  161 

XVIII.  THE  SAME  SUBJECT  CONTINUED.    .    .    .169 

XIX.  Is  WASTE  A  GOOD  ? 178 

XX.  CONCLUSION .189 


PART  I. 
SOCIETY  AND  ITS  WANTS 


A  PLAIN  MAN'S  TALK 

ON 

THE    LABOR    QUESTION. 


I. 

TO  THE  READER. 

I  DO  not  address  yon,  dear  reader,  as  an  au- 
thority on  this  subject,  propounding  a  code 
of  doctrine  which  you  are  bound  to  accept. 
I  am  only  a  plain  man,  who  has  all  his  life 
tried  to  find  out  what  he  could,  from  study 
and  observation,  about  the  state  of  society  in 
different  countries  of  the  world,  and  about  the 
relation  between  the  great  operations  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce  on  the  one  side,  and 
human  welfare  on  the  other.  I  do  not  expect 
to  tell  you  anything  which  you  cannot  easily 
understand,  and  most  of  the  facts  I  have  to  lay 
before  you  you  must  already  know;  or,  at 


1°  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

least,  you  can  easily  verify.  Of  doctrine  I 
have  little,  and  of  theory  still  less.  Indeed, 
I  am  not  a  believer  in  any  rigid  theory  of 
society,  for  the  simple  reason  that  any  theory 
we  may  propound  is  liable  to  be  modified  by 
changes  in  the  condition  of  society.  The  way 
I  look  at  the  labor  question  is  this : 

We  find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  a  state  of 
things  which  no  thinking  person  can  contem- 
plate without  deep  solicitude.  Wide-spread  dis- 
satisfaction prevails  among  the  laboring  class- 
es, not  only  in  this  country,  but  in  the  most 
enlightened  countries  of  Europe.  'j  What  gives 
gravity  to  the  problem  is,  that  these  classes 
wield  a  power,  social  and  political,  which  they 
never  before  wielded  in  the  world's  history. 
Their  power  is  reinforced  by  a  belief  among 
the  intellectual  classes,  and  in  society  generally, 
that  men  have  accumulated  large  fortunes  by 
unworthy  means,  and  that  great  corporations 
exert  a  power  for  evil  which  society  ought 
not  to  tolerate.  When  we  inquire  how  it  is 
that  great  fortunes  have  been  gained  and  dan- 
gerous powers  acquired  by  compact  bodies  of 
men,  we  find  it  to  be  in  pursuance  of  a  cer- 
tain way  of  doing  business  which  we  have  in- 
herited from  our  ancestors,  and  of  which  the 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  U 

main  feature  is  founded  on  the  supposed  right 
of  every  man  to  get  as  rich  as  he  can  by  law- 
ful combinations  and  bargains  with  his  fel- 
low-men, and  to  use  the  wealth  thus  acquired 
in  the  way  that  he  thinks  best.  The  question 
whether  this  system  will,  and  ought  to  be, 
permanent,  or  whether  it  is  unsuited  to  the 
new  conditions  of  production  which  now  pre- 
vail, is  the  great  question  of  the  day. 

We  see  everywhere  in  society  a  deep-seated 
belief  that  there  is  something  wrong  in  a  state 
of  society  in  which  one  man  may  be  enormous- 
ly rich  while  another  has  not  a  place  that  he 
can  call  his  own  in  which  to  lay  his  head. 
The  great  object  of  the  labor  movement  is 
to  do  something  towards  curing  the  wrong. 
Every  right-feeling  man  must  sympathize  with 
this  object  because  every  such  person  must 
desire  the  good  of  all  his  fellow-men. 

But  it  does  not  follow  that,  because  labor- 
organizations  desire  to  cure  the  evil,  therefore 
all  the  measures  they  propose  will  have  that 
effect.  Suppose  all  their  measures  well  adapt- 
ed to  getting  out  of  the  frying-pan,  the  prov- 
erb tells  us  where  they  may  then  find  them- 
selves. The  interests  of  sixty  millions  of 
people  make  a  very  complicated  whole,  which 


12  A   PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

the  mind  cannot  easily  grasp ;  and  when  we 
try  to  promote  them  at  one  point,  we  may  set 
them  back  at  a  hundred  other  points  without 
knowing  it.  The  only  way  to  reach  a  satis- 
factory conclusion  is,  to  study  out  all  the  facts 
of  the  case,  beginning  with  the  biggest  ones, 
and  going  step  by  step  to  those  which  are 
smaller.  Great  and  universal  facts  should 
form  the  basis  of  all  our  thought  upon  the 
subject,  because  they  are  of  vastly  more  im- 
portance than  the  special  facts,  which,  by  their 
newness  and  force,  strike  our  attention  at  the 
moment. 

In  accordance  with  this  general  method  of 
viewing  the  subject,  I  have  tried  to  see  what 
is  the  greatest  fact  with  which  we  have  to 
deal,  and  I  find  it  to  be  the  one  which  forms 
the  title  of  the  following  chapter. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  13 


UNI7EESITT 


SOCIETY  IS  A  CO-OPERATIVE  UNION. 

THE  first  and  greatest  fact  we  have  to  deal 
with  is,  that  the  society  of  which  we  are  all 
members  has  grown  into  a  great  co-operative 
association,  extending  over  the  whole  country, 
nay,  over  the  civilized  world.  Look  where 
we  will,  we  find  that  every  one  is  working 
for  the  good  of  people  whom,  in  most  cases, 
he  never  saw  and  never  expects  to  see.  For 
example  :  walking  through  the  streets  of  a 
city  we  find  hodcarriers  and  bricklayers  en- 
gaged in  erecting  a  building.  But  not  one  of 
the  men  at  work  on  that  building  will  ever 
live  in  it.  Yet  it  will  be  sure  to  benefit  some 
one.  If  it  is  a  warehouse,  it  will,  perhaps,  be 
used  for  the  storage  of  clothing  for  thousands 
of  other  people  ;  possibly  for  people  who  are 
not  yet  born.  If  a  dwelling,  a  family,  or  a 
score  of  families,  will  soon  be  sheltered  by  it. 
Going  a  little  farther,  we  see  a  cobbler  at  work. 
He  is  mending  shoes  for  his  neighbor.  A 


14  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

little  farther  on  we  find  a  furniture  factory. 
Here  a  thousand  men  are  running  machinery 
to  make  furniture  for  their  fellow-men.  The 
chairs  they  make  may  be  used  in  half  the 
states  of  the  Union.  Going  through  the 
streets  where  retail  stores  are  situated  we 
shall  find  merchants  and  clerks  taking  care  of 
and  selling  goods  for  all  the  people  of  the  city. 
If  we  go  into  a  manufacturing  town  we  shall 
find  operatives  weaving  cloth  or  forging  iron 
for  the  community.  If  wye  watch  a  railway 
we  shall  find  that  the  thousand  men  engaged 
in  running  it  are  bringing  goods  for  the  use 
of  the  people  of  a  whole  city,  or  of  a  whole 
state. 

Moreover,  everything  that  all  these  people 
are  doing  is  for  the  benefit  of  others.  Let  us 
in  imagination  walk  along  a  railway  and  stop 
the  first  freight  train  that  comes  along.  We 
insist  on  finding  out  what  interest  we  have  in 
that  freight  train.  Opening  the  first  car,  we 
find  it  loaded  with  hides,  which  are  to  be 
tanned  into  leather,  which  leather  is  to  be 
made  into  boots  and  shoes.  Accidents  aside, 
every  hide  will  help  to  clothe  somebody's  feet. 
Another  car  we  find  loaded  with  flour.  Every 
pound  of  that  flour  is  going  to  be  eaten  by 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  15 

somebody  ;  and  what  the  men  in  charge  of  it 
are  now  doing  is  to  bring  it  within  the  reach 
of  the  consumer.  Another  car  we  find  loaded 
with  butter  and  apples.  Every  pound  of  that 
butter  and  every  one  of  those  apples  are  to 
be  eaten  by  somebody.  Go  in  this  way  through 
the  whole  list,  and  examine  every  car  on  every 
railway  in  the  country,  and  you  will  find  that 
each  is  loaded  with  something  for  somebody, 
and  that  all  the  work  of  the  men  running  the 
railway  is  for  the  benefit  of  the  people  who 
are  finally  to  make  use  of  the  goods  they  are 
transporting. 

As  you  read  these  lines  there  are  tens  of 
thousands  of  men  scattered  from  Maine  to 
California — nay,  spread  over  the  various  coun- 
tries of  Europe  and  Asia — who  are  at  work  on 
things  which  are  to  minister  to  your  individ- 
ual well-being,  one,  two,  or  three  years  hence. 
Men  in  China  are  raising  tea,  which  is  to  sup- 
ply you  with  drink.  Men  in  France  are  rais- 
ing sheep,  the  wool  off  of  whose  backs  will  go 
into  your  future  coat.  A  man  in  Dakota  is 
cutting  a  log,  the  timber  of  which  will  go  into 
a  match  with  which  you  are  to  light  your  can- 
dle. A  cowboy  in  Texas  is  now  pasturing 
the  animal  out  of  whose  hide  the  boots  you  arc 


A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

•to  wear  two  years  hence  will  be  made.  A  man 
in  Cornwall  is  digging  out  tin  ore,  the  metal 
from  which  will  go  upon  the  roof  of  your 
house  to  protect  you  from  the  rain.  Men  in 
Scotland  are  building  a  ship  which  will  bring 
the  tin  over  to  you.  Men  in  Philadelphia  are 
preparing  the  machinery  for  rolling  the  iron 
on  which  the  tin  will  be  spread.  Men  in  Illi- 
nois are  preparing  the  ground  to  raise  the 
wheat  to  make  the  bread  which  you  will  eat 
during  the  next  two  years. 

I  have  studied  a  great  many  things,  both  in 
the  heavens  and  on  the  earth,  but  nowhere 
have  I  found  anything  more  marvellous  than 
this  social  organism,  a  glimpse  of  whose  oper- 
ations I  have  tried  to  give  you.  The  most 
marvellous  thing  about  it  is  that  the  opera- 
tions are  all  carried  on  by  men  who  seem  to 
their  fellows  entirely  selfish.  We  cannot  pos- 
sibly claim  that  all  these  thousands  of  peo- 
ple who  are  at  work  providing  for  your  com- 
fort during  the  next  two,  three,  or  four  years 
are  actuated  by  love  for  you.  Following  out 
the  principles  which  I  have  laid  down,  we 
need  not  inquire  too  closely  into  their  mo- 
tives. The  great  fact  is  that  they  are  work- 
ing for  our  benefit ;  and  so  long  as  they  do 


ON   THE   LABOK    QUESTION.  17 

this  we  need  not  criticise  their  motives.  Let 
it  satisfy  us  to  remember  that  "  handsome  is  as 
handsome  does." 

I  feel  that  my  description  of  this  social  ma- 
chine is  extremely  inadequate  ;  but  the  reader 
knows  as  much  about  it  as  I  do,  and  must 
complete  the  description  for  himself.  I  beg 
that  he  will  look  around  his  room  and  his 
house,  think  what  he  is  going  to  eat  and  drink 
during  the  next  few  years,  and  try  in  imagina- 
tion to  picture  to  himself  the  present  activi- 
ties of  the  men  on  whose  industry  his  future 
happiness  depends.  If  he  will  thus  get  a 
complete  picture  of  the  facts  as  he  already 
knows  them  well  in  his  mind,  he  will  have  the 
key  to  the  whole  problem  of  the  labor  ques- 
tion. 

I  now  have  to  make  an  application  of  the 
great  fact  just  set  forth.  The  question  is 
often  raised  whether  men  are  born  under  a 
natural  obligation  to  use  their  powers  and 
faculties  for  the  benefit  of  their  fellows.  I  am 
disposed  to  hold  that  they  are.  But  the  ques- 
tion has  always  seemed  to  me,  at  its  best,  a 
somewhat  barren  one,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  it  is  idle  for  us  to  claim  the  validity  of 
any  such  obligation  unless  we  can  enforce 
2 


18  A  PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

it.  Laws  which  cannot  be  enforced  do  more 
harm  than  good  whether  in  morals  or  poli- 
tics. But  the  point  which  I  wish  now  to  urge 
is,  that  the  interest  which  might  attach  to 
this  question  of  moral  obligation  is  dimin- 
ished by  the  great  fact  that  men  are  al- 
ready engaged  in  using  their  best  faculties 
for  each  other's  benefit.  We  really  have, 
among  us  and  around  us,  the  very  Utopia 
which  social  philosophers  have  so  often 
dreamed  of;  a  state  of  society  in  which,  if 
not  every  man,  at  least  a  large  majority  of 
I  men,  are  using  their  best  faculties  for  every- 
body else's  benefit.  When  they  stop  doing 
this — when  the  physician  refuses  to  heal,  the 
railway  manager  to  direct,  the  Congressman 
to  legislate,  the  professor  to  teach,  the  actor  to 
go  upon  the  stage,  the  farmer  to  sow  and  reap, 
the  engine-driver  to  run  his  engine,  the  car- 
penter to  build,  the  bricklayer  to  do  his  work, 
and  the  grocer  to  sell  his  goods — then  we  shall 
have  before  us  the  great,  burning  question 
whether  we  are  all  to  compel  each  other  to 
perform  our  social  obligations.  So  far  as  the 
present  juncture  is  concerned,  all  I  can  say  is 
that  the  views  set  forth  in  this  little  book  will 
be  found  in  perfect  consistency  with  the  the- 


ON    THE    LABOR    QUESTION.  19 

ory  that  man  is  born  with  some  obligations 
towards  his  fellow-man,  but  that  I  see  no  pres- 
ent need  of  urging  the  theory.  The  real  point 
on  which  men  differ  is,  not  the  question  of 
obligation,  but  the  question  what  a  man  ought 
to  do  if  he  wanted  to  fulfil  the  obligation,  and 
this  is  the  question  I  want  to  submit  to  your 
judgment. 

At  this  point  I  have  a  confession  to  make. 
It  has  seemed  to  me  that,  in  nearly  all  practi- 
cal and  social  questions,  the  true  position  was 
that  of  the  golden  mean.  But  on  this  partic- 
ular subject  of  the  social  organization  I  must 
confess  that  I  am  an  ultraist,  in  admiring  the 
co-operative  system  at  work  among  us.  When 
I  reflect  that  two  hundred  years  ago  nearly 
all  our  ancestors  went  barefoot,  because  only 
a  few  rich  people  could  supply  their  children 
with  shoes;  that  a  hundred  years  ago  none 
except  the  rich  had  any  clothes  except  what 
they  made  themselves>  nor  any  food  except 
what  they  raised  by  their  owTn  labor;  and 
when  I  now  look  and  see  railway  managers 
planning  and  thinking  how  they  can  so  man- 
age their  trains  as  to  bring  to  you,  to  me,  and 
to  our  families,  in  the  quickest  and  surest 
way,  the  fruit  from  California  which  we  so 


20  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

like  to  eat,  the  butter  from  New  York  State, 
the  hides  from  Texas,  and  the  flour  from  Chi- 
cago, which  are  so  necessary  to  our  comfort — 
I  say  when,  in  addition  to  all  these  thousands 
of  men  who  are  making  these  things  for  us, 
we  see  these  great  administrators  of  railways 
patiently  planning  by  day  and  night  the  most 
effective  way  to  supply  our  wants — I  am  as- 
tonished that  any  man  should  be  otherwise 
than  most  thankful  that  he  was  not  born  until 
the  nineteenth  century.  If  the  reader  thinks 
lie  could  devise  any  better  system  for  his  own 
happiness  or  for  that  of  his  neighbor  he  has  a 
much  higher  opinion  of  his  own  ability  than  I 
have  of  mine.  I  confess  that  I  should  despair 
of  inventing  any  system  under  which  that  man 
up  in  Dakota  should  be  insured  to  cut  down 
the  timber  to  get  the  wood  to  make  the  matches 
to  light  my  gas  with  next  year,  and  to  secure 
the  proper  co-operation  among  all  the  thou- 
sands of  men  who  must  work  on  those  match- 
es, both  in  making  and  transporting  them, 
until  the  grocer's  boy  in  his  wagon  shall  de- 
liver them  at  my  door.  If  you,  dear  reader, 
have  any  plan  by  which  this  will  all  be  done 
more  economically  than  it  is  done  now,  by 
which  you  can  guarantee  that  all  the  cutters 


ON  THE   LABOE   QUESTION.  21 

of  timber,  the  makers  of  rafts,  the  men  in  the 
sawmill,  the  brakemen  on  the  railway,  the  man- 
ufacturers of  chlorate  of  potash,  the  diggers 
of  sulphur,  the  makers  of  machinery,  the 
makers  of  match-boxes,  the  grocers  and  the 
grocer's  boy,  shall  every  one  perform  his  func- 
tions without  fail,  I  should  like  to  know  it. 
But  I  do  not  think  you  have. 

Possibly,  however,  you  think  there  are  cer- 
tain unsatisfactory  features  in  its  workings 
which  you  could  remedy  if  you  had  the  power 
No  doubt  there  are.  No  matter  how  well  a 
thing  may  be  done,  we  always  find  it  to  admit 
of  improvement.  Much  as  I  admire  our  so- 
cial system,  I  know  it  has  many  imperfec- 
tions. My  main  object  in  preparing  these 
talks  is  to  see  what  causes  of  complaint  we 
have,  and  whether  we  can  heal  them  better 
than  tl^ey  will  heal  themselves.  What  we 
most  want  to  know  at  the  present  critical 
juncture  is  whether  the  policy  urged  by 
friends  of  the  labor  movement  will  make  the 
laborer  better  or  worse  off;  hence  we  have  to 
consider  the  interests  of  the  laborer  as  well  as 
of  every  one  else. 


23  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 


III. 

OUR  COMMON  INTERESTS. 

FKOM  the  facts  laid  down  in  the  two  pre- 
ceding chapters  we  may  draw  certain  infer- 
ences of  prime  importance.  Our  first  infer- 
ence is  that  the  material  welfare  of  every 
individual  depends  entirely  upon  how  much 
work  his  fellow-men  do  to  supply  his  wants. 
If  we  consider  the  products  on  which  our 
well-being  depends  —  the  food  we  eat,  the 
clothes  we  wear,  the  beds  we  sleep  upon, 
and  the  houses  which  shelter  us,  we  find  that 
they  are  all  results  of  the  labor  of  other  men. 
Moreover,  so  far  as  merely  material  prosperity 
is  concerned,  that  is,  the  prosperity  for  which 
we  are  all  laboring,  our  welfare  depends  wholly 
upon  the  extent  to  which  we  can  get  our 
fellow-men  to  supply  our  wants.  No  matter 
how  dull  business  may  be,  no  matter  how  lit- 
tle money  we  may  have,  no  matter  how  low 
our  wages,  if  we  are  only  assured  for  ourselves 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  23 

and  our  children  that  we  shall  be  warmly  and 
comfortably  clothed,  housed,  and  supplied 
with  all  requisite  nourishment,  bodily  and 
mental,  then  we  are  prosperous.  Thus  our 
prosperity  depends  upon  what  we  get  our 
fellow-men  to  do  for  us,  and  upon  nothing 
else. 

Of  course  it  is  not  claimed  that  this  kind 
of  prosperity  is  the  only  kind  worth  having. 
Strong  digestion  and  a  good  conscience  are 
more  important  than  better  food  and  finer 
clothes ;  but  we  cannot  buy  these  great  requi- 
sites from  anybody.  I  am  here  talking  only 
of  things  made  for  us  by  our  fellow-men,  and 
which  we  cannot  make  for  ourselves. 

I  now  wish  to  illustrate  the  great  fact  that 
the  general  prosperity  and  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity at  large,  so  far  as  they  arise  from  ma- 
terial things  outside  of  ourselves,  depend  upon 
the  quantity  of  things  that  are  produced  by 
human  labor,  and  upon  nothing  else.  Let  us 
begin  with  the  need  of  houses,  and  let  us  see 
how  completely  the  satisfaction  of  that  need 
depends  upon  the  number  of  houses  that  can 
be  built. 

There  are,  we  may  suppose,  sixty  millions 
of  people  now  living  within  the  limits  of  the 


84 

United  States.  Let  us  suppose  that  there  are 
in  all  four  millions  of  houses  within  the  same 
limits.  Then  it  is  mathematically  certain  that, 
on  the  average,  we  must  put  fifteen  people 
into  each  house.  By  no  kind  of  legislation, 
by  no  organization,  by  no  social  changes,  can 
we  get  sixty  millions  of  people  into  four  mill- 
ions of  houses  without  putting  an  average  of 
fifteen  into  each  house.  If  this  is  a  greater 
number  than  the  average  house  will  conven- 
iently hold,  then  it  is  mathematically  certain 
that  the  inconvenience  can  be  relieved  only 
by  building  more  houses,  and  that  the  greater 
the  number  of  houses  built,  the  more  rapidly 
the  means  of  relief  will  be  attained.  Thus 
our  whole  sixty  millions  of  people,  no  matter 
what  their  occupations — capitalists,  laborers, 
carpenters,  bricklayers,  and  farmers — have  a 
deep  interest  in  getting  as  many  houses  built 
as  possible,  and  every  kind  of  action  on  the 
part  of  house-builders  which  diminishes  the 
number  of  houses  built  tends  to  the  discom- 
fort of  everybody. 

Another  consideration  may  be  adduced. 
During  the  next  ten  years  the  population  will 
probably  increase  by  fifteen  millions.  If  wre 
adopt  the  principle  that  every  fifteen  persons 


ON   THE   LABOK   QUESTION. 

must  have  a  house,  then  a  million  of  new 
houses  must  be  built  during  that  time  to  keep 
up  our  present  degree  of  comfort,  and  we 
must  also  keep  the  present  ones  in  repair. 
There  is,  therefore,  a  still  greater  necessity 
that  we  shall  get  as  many  houses  built  as  pos- 
sible. Thus  we  see  clearly  that  if  bricklayers, 
carpenters,  plasterers,  lumbermen,  and  others 
whose  services  are  necessary  to  build  houses 
insist,  on  reducing  their  hours  of  labor  by 
twenty-five  per  cent.,  the  whole  community 
will,  with  mathematical  certainty,  be  subjected 
to  a  certain  amount  of  physical  discomfort  for 
want  of  the  house-room  to  which  they  are 
accustomed.  I  say  this  is  a  physical  and  math- 
ematical necessity,  from  which  no  adjustment 
of  wages  and  no  public  policy  will  relieve  us. 
What  we  have  said  of  the  necessity  of  houses 
is  true  of  everything  else  conducive  to  our 
comfort  and  our  subsistence.  If  we  divide 
the  number  of  barrels  of  flour  produced  in  the 
country  by  the  number  of  families  in  it,  we 
shall  have  the  average  number  of  barrels 
which  each  family  may  possibly  have.  To 
find  the  average  which  each  family  really 
gets  we  must,  of  course,  subtract  the  number 
sent  abroad  before  we  make  the  division.  It 


26  A   PLAIN   MAN  8   TALK 

is  then  certain  that  we  shall  have  a  certain 
quantity  which  cannot  be  exceeded  for  the 
average  use  of  each  family.  If  the  sum  total 
of  flour  produced  is  diminished  by  any  cause 
whatever,  there  will  be  less  to  eat.  Moreover, 
since  all  flour  produced  is  finally  eaten,  the 
greater  the  crops  the  more  flour  everybody 
will  have. 

Again,  in  the  case  of  clothes,  every  suit  of 
clothes  which  is  made  is  worn  by  somebody, 
and  none  can  be  worn  by  anybody  unless  they 
are  first  made.  Hence  we  all  have  an  interest 
in  having  managers  of  factories,  tailors,  leather- 
makers,  shoemakers,  and  a  host  of  other  peo- 
ple engaged  in  promoting  the  manufacture  of 
clothing  and  shoes,  working  as  long  and  effi- 
ciently as  possible. 

Of  course,  if  any  of  these  things  which  are 
now  made  by  human  labor  can  hereafter  be 
made  by  machinery,  so  as  to  save  labor,  we 
shall  be  the  better  off.  A  certain  amount  of 
labor  will  be  set  free  from  the  manufacture 
which  can  be  employed  either  in  improving 
the  product,  or  in  making  something  else 
which  we  want.  If  we  reflect  how  utterly  in- 
adequate all  the  labor  of  the  country  would 
have  been  to  produce  a  quarter  of  the  good 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  27 

things  which  surround  us,  had  labor-saving 
machinery  never  been  introduced,  we  shall 
see  how  much  we  all  owe  to  this  machinery. 

We  also  see  that  there  can  be  no  great  de- 
struction of  property,  no  matter  to  whom  it 
belongs,  without  damaging  thousands  or  mill- 
ions of  people  to  greater  or  less  degree.  No 
doubt  when  the  unthinking  man  reads  of  such 
a  great  calamity  as  that  of  the  great  Chicago 
fire  in  1871,  he  feels  sorry  for  it  only  because 
others  suffered  ;  and  he  thinks  he  did  not  suf- 
fer himself  at  all.  Yet,  on  the  average,  the 
people  of  the  country  at  large  were  the  worse 
off  for  that  fire.  Of  course,  the  calamity  most 
affected  the  hundred  thousand  people  who 
were  for  a  time  rendered  houseless,  and  who 
had  to  suffer  privations  while  houses  were  be- 
ing built;  but  the  wheat  that  was  burned 
diminished  the  quantity  that  was  available  for 
the  country  at  large,  and  increased  the  price 
in  the  same  proportion.  Thousands  all  over 
the  country  had,  during  the  }*ear  or  two  fol- 
lowing, to  go  with  a  little  less  bread  than  they 
would  otherwise  have  had. 

There  is  a  way  of  thinking  of  those  conclu- 
sions which  will  grea-tly  help  the  reader  to 
judge  whether  any  particular  policy  does  or 


28  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

does  not  benefit  the  public  at  large.  The  an- 
nual products  of  the  country  form  a  certain 
sum  total  which,  if  we  knew  what  they  were, 
we  could  add  up  at  the  end  of  each  year.  For 
example,  at  the  end  of  each  year  there  will  be 
a  certain  number  of  houses  finished,  a  certain 
number  of  barrels  of  flour  produced,  a  certain 
number  of  suits  of  clothes  made,  and  so  on. 
We  may  imagine  all  these  things  to  be  brought 
into  one  great  central  depository.  Then  we 
may  imagine  everybody  who  uses  them  to 
take  them  out  of  the  depository.  We  then 
see  that  nobody  should  be  allowed  to  take  any- 
thing out  unless  he  puts  an  equivalent  in.  We 
also  see  that  the  more  put  in,  the  more  can  be 
taken  out,  and  vice  versa.  ?We  shall  also  see 
that  the  question  whether  the  effect  of  any 
policy  is  good  or  bad  depends  very  largely 
upon  whether  it  increases  or  diminishes  the 
sum  total  of  the  products  necessary  for  human 
welfare^ 

This  way  of  looking  at  our  welfare  and 
prosperity  may  seem  so  singular  to  you  as  to 
cause  doubt  in  your  own  minds' of  its  correct- 
ness. I  do  not  ask  you  to  accept  it  on  my 
authority,  but  I  do  ask  you  to  think  it  over. 
The  common  method  is  to  talk  about  wages, 


ON   THE    LABOK    QUESTION.  29 

prices,  demand  for  labor,  the  brisk  or  dull 
state  of  business,  the  plenty  or  scarcity  of 
money,  and  so  on.  But  a  very  little  thought 
will  show  you  that  our  real  welfare  does  not 
consist  in  any  of  these  things.  It  may,  indeed, 
be  affected  by  it,  but  the  effect  must  depend 
on  whether  demand  for  labor,  brisk  business, 
plenty  of  money,  competition,  combination, 
and  so  on,  result  in  our  getting  more  or  better 
food,  clothing,  houses,  and  furniture.  I  think, 
therefore,  the  true  way  is  to  go  right  down  to 
the  actual  things  wre  want  and  see  what  will 
help  us  to  get  them.  Instead  of  thinking  of 
these  indirect  agencies,  as  we  are  prone  to  do, 
let  ns  think  of  the  things  themselves — food, 
clothing,  and  shelter.  If  you  do  this,  you  will 
clearly  see  that  it  is  for  your  interest  and 
mine  that  all  the  things  necessary  to  supply 
our  wants  are  made  and  brought  within  our 
reach,  and  that,  if  this  is  assured,  we  need  not 
care  further  for  the  state  of  the  market. 


OF  THP, 


30  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 


IV. 

OBJECTIONS  CONSIDERED. 

EVEKY  person  capable  of  reasoning  must 
see  that  the  conclusions  that  I  have  drawn  are 
unavoidable,  so  far  as  the  general  or  aver- 
age prosperity  is  concerned.  But  the  ques- 
tion may  arise  in  the  mind  of  the  reader 
whether  increasing  the  general  prosperity  in 
the  way  pointed  out  necessarily  increases  the 
prosperity  of  each  individual.  I  can  imagine 
him  to  make  the  following  reply  to  all  I  have 
been  saying  on  the  subject: 

"You  show  plainly  enough  that  if  we  put 
sixty  millions  of  men  into  four  millions  of 
houses,  we  must,  on  the  average,  put  fifteen 
people  into  each  house ;  and  I  readily  admit 
that,  were  one  million  of  new  houses  built,  wo 
should,  on  the  average,  have  to  put  only  twelve 
people  into  each  house.  What  you  call  the 
average  prosperity,  obtained  by  dividing  the 
number  of  people  by  the  number  of  houses, 
will  no  doubt  be  thus  improved.  But  it  does 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  31 

not  at  all  follow  that  there  will  be  any  pro- 
portional increase  in  the  actual  material  pros- 
perity of  the  people,  as  you  yourself  have  de- 
fined it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  although  the 
people  may  average  fifteen  to  a  house,  they 
are  divided  very  unequally.  Some  large  houses 
have  only  a  single  family,  of  perhaps  five 
people,  all  told.  In  our  great  cities  there  are 
large  tenement  houses  in  which  hundreds  live 
in  a  single  house.  Now  if  the  million  new 
houses  built  were  all  to  be  occupied  by  those 
who  now  live  in  crowded  quarters,  your  con- 
clusion would  be  all  right.  But  would  not 
these  new  houses,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be 
mostly  occupied  by  well-to-do  owners,  who  al- 
ready have  house-room  enough,  thus  leaving 
the  crowded  poor  as  badly  off  as  ever?  And 
so  with  the  bread,  the  shoes,  the  clothing,  the 
furniture,  and  everything  else  you  have  de- 
scribed. Who  will  be  benefited  if  their  pro- 
duction is  increased  ?  It  is  not  merely  a  ques- 
tion of  producing  what  the  people  want,  but 
it  is  a  question  of  the  product  going  to  those 
who  most  want  it  and  most  deserve  it — that  is, 
the  laboring  classes.  How  will  your  theory 
stand  this  test  ?" 

I  have  stated  this  objection  as  fairly  and 


32  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

strongly  as  I  can,  because,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  thing  actually  works  just  the  way  you 
think  it  ought  to  work.  As  a  general  rule, 
an  increase  of  product  is  mainly  beneficial — 
not  perhaps  to  the  lowest  class  of  all,  but  cer- 
tainly to  the  class  of  honest  skilled  and  un- 
skilled laborers!  Let  us  look  closely  into  the 
question.  A  million  new  houses  are  built. 
As  things  go,  will  those  houses  be  occupied 
principally  by  the  rich,  who  already  have  house- 
room  enough,  or  by  those  classes  who  have 
not  house-room  enough,  or  will  it  be  divided 
between  them  ?  I  reply  to  this  that  they  will 
be  mainly  occupied  by  those  who  most  need 
houses,  and  who  are  industrious  enough  to 
pay  rent  for  them,  and  that  very  few  will  be 
taken  by  the  rich.  The  reason  of  this  is  that 
the  rich  have  already  all  the  house-room  that 
they  want,  and  will  have  it,  do  what  we  wilU 
Practically  they  have  the  first  pick  out  of  the 
depository  we  imagined  in  the  last  chapter, 
and  so  will  take  out  just  what  they  want,  and 
no  more.  So  what  is  added  is  not  for  their 
benefit,  but  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  are 
less  fortunate.  flfor  example,  a  rich  man  with 
his  family  cannot  occupy  more  than  one  house, 
except  in  rare  instances,  where  a  man  of  wealth 


ON   THE    LABOK    QUESTION.  33 

keeps  several  for  his  own  benefit.  The  num- 
ber who  want  to  do  this  is  so  very  small  that 
if  a  million  additional  houses  were  built  we 
may  be  assured  that  not  one  out  of  fifty  of 
them  would  be  occupied  by  those  who  are  rich 
enough  to  have  all  the  house-room  they  want. 
They  might  indeed  vacate  old  houses  to  oc- 
cupy the  new  ones,  but  then  the  old  ones 
would  be  for  rent,  just  as  if  they  had  been 
newly  built.  The  additional  million  of  houses 
would  therefore  be  mostly  occupied  by  those 
who  now  have  need  of  more  house-room  for 
their  own  comfort. 

It  may  be  still  further  asked  how  the  labor- 
ing classes  could  have  more  house-room  unless 
they  were  better  able  to  pay  house  rent? 
This  question  is  answered  very  simply  and 
briefly  by  saying  thaFflie  increased  number  of 
houses  would  result  in  the  lowering  of  rents. 
The  owner  of  each  house  of  course  wants  to 
get  some  benefit  out  of  it,  and,  if  he  cannot 
live  in  it  himself,  the  only  possible  way  by 
which  he  can  be  benefited  is  in  getting 
somebody  else  to  live  in  it  and  pay  rent  for 
it.  Hence  house-owners  would  be  obliged 
to  lower  their  rents  until  they  got  tenants. 
Moreover,  we  must  remember  that  in  design- 
3 


84  A   PLAIN   MAN  8    TALK 

ing  and  building  a  house,  their  own  interest 
would  lead  them  to  keep  in  view  the  wants  of 
the  particular  classes  who  would  be  able  to 
rent  new  houses  when  the  rents  were  a  little 
lower. 

What  we  have  said  of  houses  is  yet  more 
true  of  the  other  necessities  of  life.  Suppose 
a  diminution  in  the  production  of  beef  and 
pork  brought  about  by  a  strike  on  the  part  of 
laborers  engaged  in  producing  the  staples  of 
life.  It  is  then  mathematically  certain  that 
the  community,  taken  as  a  whole,  will  have 
less  beef  and  pork  to  eat.  Does  the  objector 
think  that  in  this  case  it  will  be  the  rich  rath- 
er than  the  poor  who  suffer  ?  If  he  does,  he 
thinks  the  contrary  to  the  truth.  The  Van- 
derbilts  and  the  Goulds  have  no  regard  to  the 
scarcity  or  the  high  price  of  food  in  deciding 
what  and  how  much  they  shall  eat.  They 
never  said  to  their  wives,  "  Beef  is  so  high  we 
must  stop  eating  it  and  take  to  pork."  "Pork 
is  so  high  that  we  must  economize  in  its  use." 
"  Flour  is  so  dear  the  children  must  be  satis- 
fied with  corn-cake."  But  since,  when  the 
supply  is  diminished,  it  is  mathematically  cer- 
tain that  somebody  will  have  to  have  less  beef 
and  pork  to  eat,  if  this  somebody  is  not  among 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  35 

the  rich,  he  will  be  found  elsewhere.  Hence 
it  will  not  be  the  rich,  but  the  poor,  who,  find- 
ing the  price  raised,  will  be  compelled  to  econ- 
omize. Thus  the  whole  pressure  will  fall 
upon  the  poor. 

The  very  same  thing  is  true  of  clothing. 
No  matter  how  much  the  production  of  cloth- 
ing may  be  diminished,  the  wealthy  will  get 
all  the  clothes  they  want.  They  will  wear 
them  so  long  as  they  are  fashionable,  and  then 
they  will  give  or  sell  them  to  poorer  people. 
The  man  who  must  wear  an  old  coat  a  week 
longer  in  consequence  of  a  scarcity  will  not  be 
a  rich  man,  but  a  poor  one.  We  thus  see  that 
the  objection,  instead  of  operating  against  the 
theory  we  have  laid  down,  operates  to  strength- 
en it,  by  showing  that  it  is  the  laboring  classes 
who  have  the  greatest  interest  in  the  manu- 
facture of  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  in  the 
continuous  running  of  the  railway  trains  and 
other  machinery  of  communication  necessary 
to  bring  the  products  to  those  who  want  them. 

The  objector  may  claim  that  all  this  does  not 
quite  cover  the  point  he  wishes  to  make.  Per- 
haps he  proceeds  as  follows : 

"What  you  admit  about  the  advantages 
which  the  rich  have  over  the  poor  is  one  of 


36  A   PLAIN    MAN  S   TALK 

the  very  things  I  complain  of.  You  say  that 
society  actually  is  a  great  co-operative  union. 
I  grant  it.  But  it  is  a  union  which  does  not 
divide  its  profits  fairly  among  its  members. 
It  gives  one  man  a  hundred  or  a  thousand 
times  -what  it  does  another ;  and  there  is  no 
such  difference  as  that  among  their  merits. 
Our  system  does  not  lead  to  justice  in  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  products  of  labor.  Your  claim 
that  if  we  improve  our  work  by  building 
more  houses,  and  producing  more  abundantly 
of  the  necessaries  of  life,  the  poor  will  get 
most  of  the  advantage,  does  not  do  away  with 
this  fundamental  injustice."] 

Desiring,  as  I  do,  to  make  no  claims  which 
the  reader  will  not  consider  valid,  I  must  say 
that  I  cannot  fully  answer  this  objection  in  the 
present  chapter.  I  In  fact,  the  remaining  part 
of  the  present  book  is  principally  devoted  to 
answering  it,  directly  or  indirectly.)  I  cannot 
even  claim  that  a  conclusive  answer  is  possi- 
ble, for  the  simple  reason  that  questions  of 
justice  are  very  largely  questions  between  a 
man  and  his  own  conscience.  I  shall  endeavor 
to  anticipate  your  verdict  only  by  suggesting 
two  points. 

In  the  first  place^I  hope  to  show  to  youren- 
\ 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  37 

tire  satisfaction  that  the  proportion  of  injus- 
tice to  justice  is  far  less  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed, and  that  there  is  no  such  inequality  in 
the  general  distribution  of  the  products  of 
labor  as  men  think  there  is.  True,  the  in- 
equalities are  great,  very  great,  but  I  think 
that,  looking  at  them  on  a  large  scale,  you  will 
find  that  they  are  not  inconsistent  with  Chris- 
tian justice  and  the  well-being  of  the  race.  ' 
[In  the  next  place,  I  must  point  out  that  the 
practical  side  of  the  question  is  that  on  which 
it  must  finally  turn.  Granting  that  things1 
are  not  exactly  what  they  ought  to  be,  that  is 
no  reason  for  changing  them  by  making  them 
worse,  j  I  am  in  hearty  sympathy  with  every 
effort  to  make  them  better;  and  I  do  not  be- 
lieve there  is  any  difference  of  opinion  between 
the  reader  and  myself  as  to  what  a  better  state 
of  things  would  consist  in.  We  fully  agree  that 
things  will  be  improved  when  every  man  can 
earn  a  comfortable  living  without  laboring 
more  hours  a  day  than  is  good  for  his  health 
and  happiness.  The  only  point  on  which  we 
can  differ  is  whether  particular  measures,  es- 
pecially those  proposed  by  labor  organizations, 
are  going  to  promote  this  object  or  retard  it. 
Now  this  is  the  very  question  that  I  have 


38  A   PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

written  this  little  book  to  discuss,  so  that  we 
need  not  consider  the  matter  further  in  this 
chapter. 

There  is  still  another  objection  which  possi- 
bly might  have  been  the  first  one  to  present 
itself  to  the  mind  of  the  reader.  He  will 
probably  put  it  in  the  following  shape  : 

"  You  seem  to  think  that  human  welfare  is 
necessarily  promoted  by  always  increasing  the 
quantity  of  the  necessaries  of  life  produced. 
You  forget  that  after  enough  of  these  neces- 
saries to  supply  the  wants  of  the  population  is 
produced  it  is  a  waste  of  labor  and  a  positive 
disadvantage  to  produce  more.  For  example  : 
when  we  have  made  all  the  clothes  that  people 
want  to  wear,  nobody  will  be  the  better  off 
for  piling  up  more  clothing  in  warehouses. 
The  same  is  true  of  all  the  necessaries  of  life 
— food,  clothing  and  shelter.  The  overpro- 
duction of  the  necessaries  of  life  is  not  only 
useless,  but  it  is  a  positive  disadvantage,  be- 
cause it  lowers  their  price,  and  thus  tends  to 
lower  the  wages  of  those  engaged  in  the  pro- 
duction." This  objection  would  arise  from 
mistaking  my  meaning.  When  I  talk  of  in- 
creasing the  production  of  those  things  neces- 
sary to  our  welfare,  I  do  not  mean  making  the 


OK  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  39 

same  old  goods  in  greater  quantity,  but  mak- 
ing them  of  better  quality  and  making  new 
and  better  kinds  of  goods.  For  example :  sup- 
pose that  the  labor  of  all  the  clothiers  and 
tailors  of  the  country  sufficed  to  keep  the  pop- 
ulation comfortably  clad.  Then  suppose  that 
an  improvement  in  producing  clothes  is  made 
of  such  a  kind  that  the  whole  population 
could  be  clad  in  the  same  way  by  the  labor  of 
one  half  of  those  clothiers  and  tailors.  The 
whole  body  of  the  latter  could  then  make 
twice  as  much  clothing  of  the  same  kind. 
But  they  will  not  do  this,  nor  do  I  mean  that 
they  ought  to  do  it.  What  they  really  ought 
to  do,  and  what  they  will  do,  is  to  employ  the 
labor  saved  by  the  improvement  in  making 
the  clothes  finer, softer, warmer, and  better;  in 
putting  more  needlework  into  the  dresses  of 
your  children,  so  that  they  shall  look  nice 
when  they  go  upon  the  street ;  in  making 
you  white  table-cloths,  so  that  you  will  have 
a  nicer  looking  table  to  give  you  an  appetite 
for  your  dinner;  in  making  cushions  for  your 
chairs,  and  better  beds  to  sleep  on,  and  so  forth. 
It  is  surprising  how  soon  you  will  find  your- 
self able  to  enjoy  twice  the  product  when  it 
takes  these  improved  forms.  This  is  the  kind 


42  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

and  comforts  of  life  promotes  our  prosperity ; 
everything  which  diminishes  that  supply  re- 
tards our  prosperity.  We  have,  therefore, 
only  to  inquire  whether  more  or  less  service  is 
rendered  the  public  by  any  course  of  action 
to  judge  of  the  effects  of  that  action. 

As  a  general  rule,  every  man  promotes  his 
own  interest  when  he  takes  such  measures 
that  he  can  render  better  service  to  the  public. 
For,  as  a  general  rule,  he  will  be  able  to  com- 
mand a  higher  price  for  that  better  service. 
Then  he  benefits  the  public  and  himself  at  the 
same  time. 

But  he  may  also  benefit  himself  by  such  a 
course  of  action  that  the  public  shall  be  in 
greater  need  of  his  services,  so  that  he  shall 
be  able  to  exact  a  higher  price  without  im- 
proving those  services.  Such  a  policy  will,  as 
a  general  rule,  injure  the  public  more  than  it 
will  benefit  him.  Assuming,  as  I  do,  that  the 
reader  feels  an  interest  in  the  public  welfare, 
and  wants  to  know  whether  any  particular  pol- 
icy does  or  does  not  promote  that  welfare,  I 
will  give  some  illustrations  of  the  principle 
just  laid  down. 

When  the  members  of  a  medical  society 
direct  their  efforts  towards  learning  how  to 


OK  THE  LABOR   QUESTION.  43 

cure  disease  by  exchanging  the  results  of  their 
own  experience  and  study,  they  promote  the 
public  good,  because  they  thus  learn  how  to 
treat  diseases  more  effectively,  and  to  heal 
their  patients  more  rapidly.  It  is  to  their 
own  profit  to  do  this,  because  the  better  heal- 
ers of  disease  they  can  make  themselves,  the 
more  ready  their  patients  will  be  to  employ 
them.  But  when  they  combine  by  an  agree- 
ment that  they  will  not  visit  a  patient  for  less 
than  a  certain  fixed  price,  their  action  tends 
to  the  public  injury,  because  they  may  ex- 
clude many  poor  patients  who,  not  being  able 
easily  to  pay  the  price,  will  go  without  med- 
ical attendance.  They  injure  the  public  even 
more  than  they  benefit  themselves. 

When  manufacturers  associate  themselves 
together  to  collect  information  for  improving 
their  methods  of  producing  goods,  they  bene- 
fit the  public  by  giving  it  a  larger  supply  of 
the  goods.  But  when  they  agree  that  they 
will  not  sell  below  a  certain  price,  even  if  they 
have  to  diminish  the  supply  of  goods,  then 
they  injure  the  public,  because  they  gain  their 
end  only  by  increasing  the  public  necessities 
through  cutting  off  its  supplies. 

When   an  association  of  merchants,  or  a 


42  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

and  comforts  of  life  promotes  our  prosperity ; 
everything  which  diminishes  that  supply  re- 
tards our  prosperity.  We  have,  therefore, 
only  to  inquire  whether  more  or  less  service  is 
rendered  the  public  by  any  course  of  action 
to  judge  of  the  effects  of  that  action. 

As  a  general  rule,  every  man  promotes  his 
own  interest  when  he  takes  such  measures 
that  he  can  render  better  service  to  the  public. 
For,  as  a  general  rule,  he  will  be  able  to  com- 
mand a  higher  price  for  that  better  service. 
Then  he  benefits  the  public  and  himself  at  the 
same  time. 

But  he  may  also  benefit  himself  by  such  a 
course  of  action  that  the  public  shall  be  in 
greater  need  of  his  services,  so  that  he  shall 
be  able  to  exact  a  higher  price  without  im- 
proving those  services.  Such  a  policy  will,  as 
a  general  rule,  injure  the  public  more  than  it 
will  benefit  him.  Assuming,  as  I  do,  that  the 
reader  feels  an  interest  in  the  public  welfare, 
and  wants  to  know  whether  any  particular  pol- 
icy does  or  does  not  promote  that  welfare,  I 
will  give  some  illustrations  of  the  principle 
just  laid  down. 

When  the  members  of  a  medical  society 
direct  their  efforts  towards  learning  how  to 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  43 

cure  disease  by  exchanging  the  results  of  their 
own  experience  and  study,  they  promote  the 
public  good,  because  they  thus  learn  how  to 
treat  diseases  more  effectively,  and  to  heal 
their  patients  more  rapidly.  It  is  to  their 
own  profit  to  do  this,  because  the  better  heal- 
ers of  disease  they  can  make  themselves,  the 
more  ready  their  patients  will  be  to  employ 
them.  But  when  they  combine  by  an  agree- 
ment that  they  will  not  visit  a  patient  for  less 
than  a  certain  fixed  price,  their  action  tends 
to  the  public  injury,  because  they  may  ex- 
clude many  poor  patients  who,  not  being  able 
easily  to  pay  the  price,  will  go  without  med- 
ical attendance.  They  injure  the  public  even 
more  than  they  benefit  themselves. 

When  manufacturers  associate  themselves 
together  to  collect  information  for  improving 
their  methods  of  producing  goods,  they  bene- 
fit the  public  by  giving  it  a  larger  supply  of 
the  goods.  But  when  they  agree  that  they 
will  not  sell  below  a  certain  price,  even  if  they 
have  to  diminish  the  supply  of  goods,  then 
they  injure  the  public,  because  they  gain  their 
end  only  by  increasing  the  public  necessities 
through  cutting  off  its  supplies. 

When   an  association  of  merchants,  or  a 


44  A   PLAIN   MAN7S   TALK 

mercantile  exchange,  devotes  itself  to  procur- 
ing the  latest  and  most  exact  news  of  prices 
and  markets  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  it 
promotes  the  public  good,  because  its  mem- 
bers will  then  buy  from  the  people  who  most 
want  to  sell ;  and  they  will  sell  to  the  people 
who  are  in  greatest  need  of  goods,  because  it 
is  such  people  who,  other  conditions  being 
equal,  will  be  willing  to  pay  the  highest  prices. 
But  if  they  should  combine  not  to  sell  below 
a  certain  price,  and  to  stop  trading  unless  they 
could  make  -a  certain  profit,  it  would  tend  to 
the  general  injury  by  lessening  the  supplies 
of  the  necessaries  of  life. 

Please  notice  the  principle  involved  in  all 
the  preceding  cases.  The  whole  question 
turns  on  whether  yon  attract  men  to  do  what 
you  want  them  to  do,  or  throw  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  their  doing  differently  from  what 
you  desire.  Suppose  that  you  are  accustomed 
to  go  by  a  certain  road  to  market.  I  open  a 
different  road,  which  it  is  for  my  advantage 
that  you  should  take  rather  than  your  old 
road.  If  I  induce  you  to  change  by  digging 
up  your  old  road,  so  that  it  is  harder  than  be- 
fore for  your  horses,  and  thus  press  you  to 
take  mine,  then  I  injure  you.  But  if  I  plant 


ON   THE   LABOK    QUESTION.  45 

my  new  road  with  flowers  and  make  it  smooth- 
er and  better  than  the  old  one,  s6  that  you 
take  it  of  your  own  choice,  then  I  benefit  you. 
The  distinction  between  inducing  the  public 
and  pressing  it  is  so  simple  that  I  do  not  see 
how  any  one  can  fail  to  see  it,  yet  the  astonish- 
ing fact  is  that  they  do  fail.  We  continually 
hear  people  say  they  are  forced  to  do  things 
which  they  need  not  do  at  all  unless  it  is  for 
their  own  advantage;  and  we  also  hear  of  ap- 
plying force  or  pressure  to  people  in  order  to 
give  them  liberty  to  do  as  they  please. 

This  same  principle  can  be  applied  to  the 
effects  of  labor  organizations^  A  union  of 
laborers  throughout  the  country,  having  for 
its  object  to  get  information  of  the  rate  of 
wages  in  all  employments  in  different  parts 
of  the  country,  and  to  learn  the  prices  of  the 
necessaries  of  life  with  a  view  of  knowing 
where  to  apply  for  work,  would  be  beneficial 
both  to  the  members  and  the  public.  It 
would  benefit  the  members  by  enabling  them 
to  find  the  best  market  for  the4r  labor,  and 
it  would  benefit  the  public  by  sending  labor- 
ers where  wages  are  highest ;  that  is,  where 
the  public  had  most  need  of  labor. 
5  So,  also,  if  the  organization  devote  itself  to 


46  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

the  improvement  of  its  members  in  the  effi- 
ciency with  which  they  could  carry  on  their 
trade,  it  would  be  a  public  benefit.  For  exam- 
ple, if  an  association  of  carpenters  should  learn, 
by  comparing  notes,  how  to  do  ten  per  cent, 
more  work  in  the  same  time,  and  still  do  it  in 
the  very  best  manner,  it  would  be  a  public 
benefit,  because  then  each  person  who  lives  in 
a  house  would  be  able  to  have  a  little  larger 
or  better  house  than  he  had  before  the  carpen- 
ters thus  improved  themselves.  The  same 
thing  would  be  true  if  bricklayers  taught  each 
other  how  to  build  a  better  wall  in  the  same 
time,  or  plasterers  to  do  fine  and  strong  work 
as  easily  as  they  now  do  poor  work.  In  all 
such  cases  the  wants  of  the  community  would 
;  be  better  supplied. 

So,  also,  if  a  labor  union  should  devote  its 
energies  to  searching  out  the  idle  children  of 
the  poor,  who  are  growing  up  without  either 
manual  training  or  an  education,  and  should 
induce  or  encourage  all  of  them  to  learn  such 
trades  as  would  make  them  useful  members 
of  society,  then  a  great  good  would  be  done. 
I  do  not  know  any  feature  of  our  modern  so- 
ciety more  discouraging  to  the  philanthropist 
than  the  number  of  children  in  our  great 


ON   THE   LABOR  QUESTION.  47 

cities  who  are  growing  np  with  no  thought  of 
how  they  shall  earn  a  living  in  the  future, 
and  I  know  of  no  more  worthy  form  of  be- 
nevolent effort  than  that  directed  to  their 
training. 

But  when  such  a  union  agrees  that  none  of 
its  members  shall  work  for  less  than  a  certain 
rate  of  wages,  and  makes  them  stop  work  be- 
cause they  cannot  command  these  wages,  then* 
it  injures  the  public.  For  every  day  that  its 
members  stop  work  there  will  be  fewer  houses 
for  ourselves  and  our  children.  If,  by  hold- 
ing out,  they  finally  succeed  in  commanding 
the  increased  wages,  they  have  still  suffered 
privations  during  their  strike,  and  have  gained 
their  end  only  by  increasing  the  public  neces- 
sities for  their  work. 

I  do  not  pretend  to  know  authoritatively 
in  which  of  these  two  directions  labor  organ- 
izations have  tended  ;  but  all  I  have  heard  of 
them  is  in  the  second  direction  rather  than  in 
the  first.  i  I  have  seldom,  if  ever,  heard  of 
their  combining  to  render  better  service  to 
the  public.  Such  of  their  rules  as  I  have  seen  > 
are  rather  in  the  direction  of  rendering  as  lit- 
tle service  to  the  community  as  they  conven- 
iently can.  For  example,  it  is  certain  that  a 


48  A   PLAIN   MAN  S    TALK. 

man  who  works  ten  hours  a  day  will  render 
'more  service  to  the  community  than  one  who 
works  only  eight.  But  some  labor  organiza- 
tions, instead  of  encouraging  their  members 

.to  work  ten  hours,  fine  them  if  they  do  it; 
that  is,  they  seek  to  compel  each  other  to  ren- 
der a  less  service  to  the  public. 

My  object  in  writing  this  book  is  not  so 
much  to  criticise  as  to  enable  other  people  to 
criticise  and  judge  for  themselves  ;  and,  there- 
fore, I  shall  for  the  present  leave  the  reader 
to  draw  his  own  conclusions  as  to  whatsis- 
good  and  what  evil  in  labor  organizations.  I 
may,  however,  remark  that  I  could  never  feel 
quite  satisfied  of  the  soundness  of  the  oft-re- 
peated claim  that  organized  labor,  as  it  is  called, 

/  has  been  of  great  benefit  to  the  laborer.  \  I 
have  already  shown  in  part,  and  shall  try  to 
show  more  fully  hereafter,  that  the  enormous 
increase  in  the  production  of  the  necessaries 
of  life  which  has  resulted  from  the  introduc- 
tion of  machinery  could  not  but  make  a  great 
improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  labor- 
ing classes  ;  and  I  think  that  this,  and  not  or- 
ganization, is  the  source  of  the  improvement 
which  we  have  witnessed.  But  this  is  a  sub- 
ject to  be  discussed  hereafter. 


PART  II. 

CAPITAL  AND  ITS  USES 


VI. 

THE  RAILWAY  QUESTION:  ITS  BIG  SIDE. 

I  VERY  much  fear  that  I  am  now  going  so 
to  expose  my  ignorance  and  lack  of  under- 
standing that  the  reader  will  distrust  my 
teachings.  But  as  I  promised  in  setting  out 
only  to  tell  things  which  the  reader  as  well  as 
myself  would  understand,  I  am  bound,  when 
I  come  to  something  I  do  not  understand,  to 
make  a  frank  confession.  I  read  a  great  deal 
in  the  newspapers,  and  hear  a  great  deal  else- 
where, about  the  despotic  dominion  of  rail- 
way corporations  and  the  grinding  monopoly 
of  railways.  I  confess  that  I  find  it  quite  im- 
possible to  understand  this  view,  or  to  see  any 
reason  in  it.  I  have  travelled  over  numerous 
railways  in  nearly  every  quarter  of  Europe 
and  America,  and  have  been  surprised  at  the 
pains  always  taken  by  their  managers  to  con- 
sult my  wishes  and  convenience.  Their  trains 
always  started  at  the  hour  most  convenient 
for  me  and  for  my  fellows  who  had  to  travel 


52  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

over  the  road.  The  study  and  experiments 
of  scores  of  scientific  men,  and  the  mechanical 
ingenuity  of  hundreds  of  inventors,  had  been 
drawn  upon  by  the  railway  managers  to  make 
an  engine  and  car  which  should  carry  me  with 
great  speed  in  entire  safety,  and  land  me  at 
my  destination  in  time  to  transact  my  busi- 
ness. Different  railway  managers  had  con- 
sulted together  to  have  their  trains  so  connect 
that  I  should  get  through  with  the  least  pos- 
sible loss  of  time.  Every  man  on  the  road, 
especially  the  engine-driver,  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all,  did  his  very  best  to  further  my  ob- 
jects. Among  the  men  for  whom  I  have  a 
particular  admiration  are  managers  of  railways 
and  locomotive  engineers.  "When  I  leave  a 
train  I  am  in  the  habit  of  turning  my  head  as 
I  pass  the  engine  to  have  a  good  look  at  the 
engine-driver  who  has  rendered  me  so  excellent 
a  service  and  kept  such  a  sharp  lookout  against 
any  accident  happening  to  me.  It  seems  to 
me  that  there  is  hardly  any  class  of  men  who 
show  such  nerve  and  such  skill,  and  who  have 
of tener  risked  or  laid  down  their  lives  to  save 
their  passengers. 

The  cheapness  with  which  the  whole  thing 
is  done  is  one  of  its  marvels.     Fifty  years  ago 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  53 

/ 

it  would  have  been  quite  incredible  that  these 
monopolists  should  have  carried  a  passenger 
at  the  rate  of  forty  or  fifty  miles  an  hour  at 
the  rate  of  two  cents  a  mile.  Here  I  may  so 
far  anticipate  as  to  remark  upon  the  very 
small  fraction  of  my  money  which  goes  into 
the  pocket  of  the  owners  of  railways.  Much 
the  larger  portion  is  paid  out  to  the  thousands 
of  workmen  whose  services  are  necessary  to 
my  journey. 

Where  does  the  grinding  and  oppression 
come  in  ?  I  am  sure  it  is  not  on  the  railway. 
Is  it  when  I  am  away  from  the  railway  ?  No ; 
I  never  knew  a  railway  official  to  follow  me 
after  I  left  the  station.  Never  in  Europe  or 
America  did  one  of  them  come  to  me  and  in- 
sist that  I  should  ride  on  his  railway.  I  be- 
lieve in  one  or  two  cases  during  my  life  they 
woke  me  up  by  a  steam-whistle  when  I  hap- 
pened to  sleep  in  a  hotel  near  the  road.  With 
this  exception  I  was  never  disturbed  by  one 
of  these  monopolists  unless  I  went  to  ride  on 
his  train,  and  then  I  found  him  doing  all  ho 
could  to  carry  me  to  my  journey's  end  in  the 
most  easy  and  convenient  way. 

Possibly,  in  my  ignorance  of  this  whole 
subject  of  monopoly,  I  have  made  a  great  mis- 


54  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

take  in  concluding  that  it  is  the  public  at  large 
which  is  injured  by  it.  When  one  is  igno- 
rant he  has  to  grasp  at  mere  possibilities; 
and  it  may  be  that  it  is  only  the  workmen  on 
the  railway  who  are  supposed  to  be  injured 
by  the  monopoly.  If  this  is  so,  I  confess  to 
an  almost  equal  difficulty  in  understanding  the 
case.  *  If  these  railway  managers  ever  force 
men  to  run  their  trains  who  do  not  want  to  do 
so  for  the  wages  they  were  receiving,  I  never 
heard  of  it.  This  is  a  free  country,  and  under 
.our  laws  not  even  a  "Vanderbilt  or  a  Gould 
can  force  a  man  to  run  their  trains  one  hour 
longer  than  he  wants  to.  Where,  then,  does 
the  injury  come  in  ? 

I  do  not  deny  that  a  man  may  temporarily 
feel  himself  oppressed  by  some  action  of  the 
railway  ,by  which  lie  is  employed;  that  a  great 
many  arrangements  for  his  comfort  and  con- 
venience may  be  omitted;  and  very  little  re- 
gard paid  to  his  daily  wants. v  If  so,  he  has  a 
perfect  right  to  do  all  he  can  to  make  his  com- 
plaints heard,  and  even  to  leave  the  service  of 
the  road  if  they  remain  unheeded.  Certain- 
ly, it  seems  to  me  for  the  selfish  interest  of 
railway  Managers  that  they  should  do  the  very 
best  they  can  to  please  the  men,  because,  the 


ON  THE  LABOR   QUESTION.  55 

better  they  treat  their  men,  the  more  willing 
the  latter  will  be  to  serve  them,  and  the  less 
likely  to  engage  in  strikes.  If,  then,  they  wil- 
fully ill-treat  their  employees,  they  are  not 
such  sharp  men  as  we  commonly  suppose,  and 
should  rather  be  classified  as  dull  fools.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  general  principle  that 
those  corporations  which  treat  their  men  best 
will  get  the  best  service  affords  about  as  good 
a  guarantee  against  ill-treatment  as  we  can  \vell 
advise.  This,  however,  is  a  subject  on  which 
I  am  open  to  correction  ;  indeed,  as  I  have  al- 
ready explained,  this  whole  chapter  is  little 
more  than  a  confession  of  ignorance  and  lack 
of  understanding,  which  I  should  be  much 
obliged  to  have  remedied. 

Possibly  those  who  know  more  may  reply 
that  I  entirely  misunderstand  the  matter  in 
dispute.  The  real  cause  of  the  complaint  may 
be,  not  that  these  railways  do  not  serve  the 
public  in  the  best  way  they  can,  but  that  they 
are  owned  and  managed  by  a  very  hateful, 
selfish,  proud,  overbearing  set  of  men,  who 
have  managed  to  accumulate  from  one  million 
to  two  hundred  millions  of  dollars  each.  If 
this  is  the  case,  I  immediately  raise  the  ques- 
tion of  common-sense  as  against  sentiment. 


56  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

I  say  boldly  that  I  do  not  care  how  selfish, 
proud,  wicked,  and  overbearing  the  managers 
and  owners  of  these  roads  may  be,  nor  do  I 
care  if  they  own  one  million  or  one  thousand 
million  dollars,  if  they  only  arrange  their 
trains  to  suit  my  convenience  and  convey  me 
at  the  lowest  rates.  What  should  we  think 
of  a  man  who  brought  such  sentimental  con- 
siderations into  his  practical,  every-day  life  ? 
Suppose,  for  example,  that  a  man  should  re- 
fuse to  have  an  ivory  ornament  or  utensil  be- 
cause the  elephant  from  which  it  came  was  a 
very  large  and  ugly  animal,  who  had  trampled 
a  man  to  death  ?  What  should  we  think  if 
he  would  not  allow  his  children  to  learn  geog- 
raphy because  the  geographies  tell  us  about 
the  Atlantic  Ocean,  which  has  drowned  thou- 
sands of  people,  ,and  makes  men  seasick  when 
they  sail  on  it?  I  am  sure  you  would  say 
that  such  a  man  was  not  guided  by  sound 
judgment.  But  I  do  not  see  how  the  case  is 
any  better  with  a  man  who  complains  of  a 
very  well-managed  railroad  because  the  prin- 
cipal owner  of  it  is  a  very  objectionable  person. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  57 


VII. 

THE  RAILWAY  QUESTION:  ITS  LITTLE  SIDE. 

I  FANCY  the  reader  complaining  that  in  the 
preceding  chapter  I  have  ignored  the  strong 
objections  which  he  urges  against  our  railway 
management  and  considered  only  the  weak 
ones.  I  admit  that  he  is  right  to-  this  extent : 
that  I  persisted  in  looking  on  the  subject  from 
a  single  standpoint,  to  wit,  that  of  the  inter- 
ests of  the  great  public,  of  whom  we  really 
see  and  hear  very  little,  and  considering 
whether,  on  the  whole,  that  public  was  well 
served  by  the  railways.  I  claim  that  this  is 
the  big  side  of  the  question. 

But  let  us  by  all  means  hear  the  other  side 
and  weigh  it  impartially.  So  far  as  I  know, 
its  ablest  and  most  authoritative  representa- 
tion is  found  in  Mr.  Hudson's  book  on  "  the 
Eailways  and  the  Republic,"  and  in  certain 
papers  by  Dr.  R.  T.  Ely  in  Harper's  Magazine, 
I  commend  these  publications  to  the  careful 
study  of  every  man  interested  in  the  subject. 


58  A   PLAIN   HAN7S   TALK 

But  I  cannot  pretend  to  answer  their  views 
and  arguments,  and  that  for  two  reasons.  In 
the  first  place,  if  they  could  be  answered  it 
would  take  a  big  book  to  do  it.  In  the  next 
place,  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  a  good  deal 
of  what  they  say  is  true.  They  do,  indeed, 
present  only  one  side  of  the  case,  and  I  sus- 
pect that  that  side  is  a  little  exaggerated ; 
but  I  do  not  object  to  this,  because  I  am  in 
favor  of  all  measures  which  will  improve  our 
railway  management,  and,  in  order  to  secure 
such  measures,  the  attention  of  the  public 
must  be  loudly  called  to  the  subject. 

But  what  I  wish  the  reader  to  clearly  un- 
derstand is  that  this  is  the  little  side  of  the 
railway  question  and  not  its  big  side,  and  that 
the  great  facts  which  I  set  forth  in  my  last 
talk  are  more  important  than  all  thai  can  be 
said  on  the  other  side.  Allow  me  to  show  by 
an  illustration  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that 
this  is  the  big  side  of  the  question. 

If  a  person  should  travel  through  the 
healthiest  country  in  the  world,  search  out 
all  the  sick,  watch  and  describe  their  suffer- 
ing, and  then  publish  to  the  world  what  he 
had  observed,  he  might  make  his  readers  be- 
lieve it  the  most  pestilential  country  on  the 


ON  THE   LABOK    QUESTION.  59 

globe.  He  could  rival  Milton  in  describ- 
ing 

"All  maladies 

Of  ghastly  spasm,  or  racking  torture,  qualms 
Of  heart-sick  agony,  all  feverous  kinds, 
Dropsies  and  asthmas  and  joint-racking  rheums," 

in  such  terms  that  one  would  hardly  dare  to 
visit  that  country,  and  yet  tell  nothing  but 
the  truth. 

But  the  person  who  wanted  to  know  the 
real  merits  of  the  country  would  look  into 
statistical  tables  in  order  to  learn  the  death- 
rate  per  annum.  If  he  found  it  to  be  only 
fifteen  in  a  thousand  he  would  know  that  the 
country  was  the  healthiest  in  the  world  in 
spite  of  the  melancholy  picture.  This  little 
result  of  statistics  would  be  a  great  big  fact 
swallowing  up  all  the  little  facts  about  the 
sufferers,  because  it  would  be  a  result  founded 
on  a  consideration  of  all  the  cases  of  life  and 
death  in  the  whole  population,  while  the  facts 
set  forth  by  the  observer  would  only  describe 
individual  cases. 

Just  so  with  the  railroad  question.  The 
fact  that  our  great  trunk  lines  of  railway  car- 
ry a  ton  of  freight  a  thousand  miles  for  six  or 
seven  dollars  may  seem  like  a  little  fact,  but 


60  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

in  reality  it  is  a  very  big  one,  because  it  is  a 
general  average  result  of  the  price  at  which 
they  serve  all  the  millions  of  people  who 
live  in  the  Western  and  Middle  States.  Com- 
paring it  with  the  rates  for  similar  services 
abroad,  it  shows  that  our  railroads  serve  the 
public  about  as  cheaply  as  any  in  the  world, 
notwithstanding  the  drawbacks  under  which 
they  labor  arising  from  sparseness  of  popula- 
tion and  high  wages.  This  again  shows  that 
our  railway  management  is  among  the  best  in 
the  world,  in  the  terms  on  which  it  serves 
the  public.  Every  sensible  man  who  is  quali- 
fied to  judge  of  the  subject  knows  that  on  no 
other  system  could  we  get  passengers  or  freight 
carried  more  cheaply  than  we  now  do.  If  the 
government  of  the  United  States  should  take 
possession  of  every  railway  in  the  country  to- 
morrow there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that  the 
average  cost  of  freight  transportation  would 
be  higher  than  it  now  is  on  the  great  trunk 
lines.  This  great  big  fact  completely  swal- 
lows up  all  the  little  facts  that  one  or  two 
railways  have  no  fixed  prices,  and  charge 
whatever  they  think  a  customer  can  be  made 
to  pay,  that  some  others  make  discriminating 
rates,  charging  one  man  more  than  they  do 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  61 

another  for  the  same  services,  and  that  yet 
others  charge  more  for  a  short  haul  than  for 
a  long  one.  Carrying  passengers  forty  miles 
an  hour  for  two  or  three  cents  a  mile  is  a  fact 
which  outweighs  all  we  can  say  about  watered 
stocks,  just  as  the  fact  of  the  Mruria  carry- 
ing a  thousand  passengers  across  the  ocean  at 
a  speed  of  twenty  miles  an  hour  outweighs  all 
we  can  say  about  the  badness  of  the  coffee 
these  passengers  have  to  drink. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  am  not  argu- 
ing against  any  measures  which  will  improve 
our  railway  service.  I  go  yet  further  and 
admit  that  this  little  side  of  the  question  is 
the  one  which  requires  most  attention.  If,  in 
the  healthy  country  we  have  just  imagined, 
it  was  found  that  here  and  there  people  suf- 
fered from  bad  drainage,  of  course  I  would 
want  the  drainage  improved.  So  with  our 
railway  service.  What  I  think  we  ought  to 
avoid  is  any  policy  which  will  discourage  cap- 
italists from  building  more  railways.  If  we 
so  hem  these  roads  by  restrictions  that  capi- 
talists can  no  longer  feel  secure  of  a  profit 
by  running  them,  we  shall  simply  stop  their 
building  until  we  adopt  new  measures,  or  give 
new  guarantees  to  capitalists  Against  loss. 


63 

I  admit  that  there  is  much  that  is  wrong  in 
the  relation  of  railroad  corporations  to  the 
public.  It  is  a  wrong  upon  the  people  that 
nearly  all  our  prominent  and  influential  pub- 
lic men,  including  members  of  Congress  and 
members  of  state  legislatures,  travel  free  wher- 
ever they  wish  to  go.  I  am  ready  to  do  any- 
thing I  can  to  correct  this  wrong.  It  is  wrong 
that  corporations  of  any  kind  can  own  and 
manage  state  legislatures.  It  is  a  wrong  when 
courts  are  under  the  influence  of  such  corpo- 
rations. It  is  a  wrong  when  a  railroad  charges 
one  person  more  than  another  for  the  same 
service.  We  may  consider  these  different 
wrongs  from  different  points  of  view  ;  for  ex- 
ample, from  one  point  of  view  with  reference 
to  their  nature  and  remedy,  and  from  another 
point  with  the  object  of  understanding  their 
connection  with  the  benefits  rendered  by  the 
roads.  It  is  from  the  latter  standpoint  that 
the  matter  should  first  be  considered. 

The  corrupting  influence  of  railroad  corpo- 
rations upon  state  legislatures,  and  hence  upon 
the  public  and  upon  politics  in  general,  has 
been  denounced  in  such  terms  as  might  imply 
that  it  would  be  better  to  have  no  roads  than 
to  suffer  such  demoralization  as  we  are  suf- 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  63 

fering  and  are  likely  to  suffer  from  them. 
Even  if  this  were  true,  which  it  is  not,  it  is 
an  exceedingly  incomplete  statement  of  the 
question,  because  it  implies  that  the  main  fault 
is  on  the  side  of  the  railroads  and  corporations. 
It  is  not  correct  to  say  that  corporations  cor- 
rupt legislators.  No  influence  can  corrupt  an 
honest  man.  If  corporations  practice  bribery 
with  success,  it  is  only  because  they  have  cor- 
rupt men  to  deal  with.  Hence,  to  state  the 
case  exactly  as  it  is,  we  ought  to  say  that  the 
corporations  take  advantage  of  the  corrupti- 
bility of  the  men  who  form  our  state  legisla- 
tures. They  find  them  already  corrupted,  and 
act  accordingly. 

Now,  if  these  legislators  are  corrupt,  whose 
fault  is  it  ?  Evidently  it  is  the  fault  of  the 
public  who  send  bad  men  to  represent  them. 
It  is,  therefore,  the  voters  who  ought  to  be  de- 
nounced for  all  this  wickedness,  and  not  the 
corporations.  The  real  evil  is  that  the  aver- 
age voter  is  nearly  always  ready  to  support 
his  party's  ticket,  regardless  of  the  character 
of  the  men  whose  names  it  bears.  When  the 
great  mass  of  voters  are  determined  that  none 
but  honest  men  shall  represent  them,  and  that 
none  but  honest  methods  shall  be  employed 


64  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

in  politics,  the  evil  will  be  cured,  and  it  will 
not  be  cured  before.  Our  first  step  is,  then,  to 
educate  the  people  to  a  proper  sense  of  their 
duties  and  rights. 

If  we  now  look  at  the  matter  from  another 
point  of  view  we  shall  see  that  the  wholesale 
denunciation  of  corrupt  practices  which  I  have 
referred  to  tends  to  aggravate  rather  than  cure 
the  evil.  The  more  respect  the  public  has  for 
the  legitimate  rights  of  a  corporation,  the  less 
excuse  that  corporation  has  for  trying  to  de- 
ceive the  public.  Vice  versa,  in  a  community 
where  the  rights  of  corporations  are  not  duly 
respected,  those  bodies  will  necessarily  seek  to 
secure  their  rights  by  improper  methods.  The 
nearer  public  sentiment  approaches  to  correct 
views  in  this  respect,  the  more  readily  will 
great  corporations  let  the  public  understand 
and  see  into  their  affairs. 

Let  us  illustrate  this  by  the  watering  of 
stocks.  Suppose  that  some  enterprise,  it  may 
be  a  copper-mine  or  it  may  be  a  railway,  finds 
itself  making  very  large  profits.  As  a  general 
rule  it  has  a  perfect  right  to  all  the  profits  it 
can  make  by  legitimate  business  and  lawful 
methods.  But  the  stockholders  know  very 
well  that  if  the  public  saw  stock  on  which 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  65 

only  thirty,  forty,  or  fifty  dollars  a  share  had 
been  paid  going  up  to  three  hundred,  five 
hundred,  or  a  thousand  dollars  a  share,  there 
would  be  a  loud  complaint,  and  perhaps  the 
state  legislatures  would  be  called  upon  to  in- 
tervene and  stop  these  exorbitant  profits.  So, 
in  lieu  of  paying  money  dividends  and  leav- 
ing the  shares  to  grow  in  value,  the  directors 
declare  "  stock  dividends,"  which  continually 
increase  the  number  of  shares  held,  so  that  the 
profits  per  share  are  kept  down  to  a  moderate 
percentage.  The  public  at  large  is  neither 
better  nor  worse  off  for  this  "  watering,"  for 
the  simple  reason  that  the  company  will  make 
as  much  money  from  the  public  as  they  can 
under  any  circumstances,  and  they  cannot  com- 
mand any  more  after  watering  their  stock  than 
they  could  before. 

We  may  lay  it  down  as  a  rule  that  nothing 
is  more  useless  than  the  denunciation  of  indi- 
viduals or  bodies  of  men  for  acts  which  are  in 
consonance  with  the  general  tendency  of  hu- 
man nature.  As  a  general  rule  such  denun- 
ciation makes  matters  worse  more  than  it  helps 
them.  When  a  remedy  is  needed,  it  must  be 
applied  through  public  opinion,  not  by  meas- 
ures against  the  men  complained  of,  but  by 
5 


66  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

changing  the  situation  so  that  selfish  men  can- 
not take  advantage  of  it.  The  cure  for  bribery 
of  legislators  is  not  reached  by  merely  de- 
nouncing the  men  who  bribe,  but  by  sending 
honest  men  as  representatives.  Of  course  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  bribery  should  be 
condoned.  I  mean  that  there  will  be  very  lit- 
tle bribery  where  we  have  a  sufficiently  pure 
and  elevated  public  opinion  on  the  subject. 
Practically  the  courts  and  the  laws  represent 
public  opinion.  When  the  latter  is  controlled 
by  a  high  moral  standard  there  will  be  very 
little  bribery,  and  that  little  will  be  speedily 
punished.  When  the  moral  standard  is  low, 
there  will  be  plenty  of  bribery,  do  what  we 
will,  and  we  shall  not  be  able  to  punish  it  in 
the  courts.  It  is,  therefore,  to  public  educa- 
tion that  we  are  to  look  for  a  cure. 

Now  let  us  get  things  in  their  true  perspec- 
tive. The  facts  which  I  have  brought  out  in 
these  talks  are  greater  and  more  wide-reach- 
ing than  any  of  the  evils  of  railway  manage- 
ment. Denounce  the  latter  as  we  will,  it  re- 
mains true  that  the  men  who  run  railroads  are 
the  ablest  business  managers  that  the  country 
has  seen,  that  they  serve  the  public  cheaper 
than  any  other  set  of  men  could  have  done 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  67 

it,  and  that  their  work  lies  at  the  very  basis 
of  our  civilization.  To  settle  the  question ; 
whether,  as  a  class,  they  charge  too  much  for 
their  services,  we  must  see  what  profits  they 
make.  It  is  said  that  during  the  past  twelve 
months  the  railways  of  the  country  at  large 
have  not  earned  the  current  rate  of  interest 
upon  the  capital  actually  invested  by  their  pro- 
jectors. If  this  is  true,  it  disposes  at  a  single 
stroke  of  the  complaint  against  high  charges. 
As  to  their  tyranny,  all  that  can  be  said  of  it 
is  disposed  of  by  the  great  fact  that  not  one 
person  out  of  a  hundred  who  reads  these  pa- 
pers was  ever  consciously  injured  by  a  railroad 
corporation  or  ever  received  anything  but 
benefits  from  it. 


A   PLAIN   MAN  8   TALK 


VIII 

HOW  ONE  MAN  MAY  DO  THE  WORK  OF  TEN 
THOUSAND. 

"  THEEE  must  be  something  wrong  in  a  sys- 
tem under  which  one  man  can  accumulate  a 
hundred  millions  of  dollars,  and  the  people  of 
this  country  are  determined  to  do  something 
towards  rectifying  it."  We  have  all  heard 
this  sentiment  in  a  thousand  forms  during  the 
last  few  months.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
it  voices  the  feeling  on  which  the  popular 
support  of  the  labor  movement  is  based. 
When  the  common  man  hears  that  somebody 
has  gained  one  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  he 
naturally  thinks  that  the  system  by  which  he 
gained  it  must  have  an  element  of  injustice  in 
it.  If  asked  why  any  lack  of  justice,  the 
common  man  would  probably  answer,  that 
:his  rich  man  must  have  gained  money  which 
in  equity  belonged  to  other  people.  The  ques- 
tion of  equity  is  not,  however,  the  only  one  to 
be  considered.  That  of  policy  also  comes  into 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  69 

play.     If  it  should  turn  out  that  the  public 
at  large  were  great  gainers  through  some  onefij 
person  being  allowed  to  accumulate  a  hundred  ; 
million  of  dollars,  we  might  dispense  with  thej 
question  of  equity.     But  sinc'e  equity  as  well 
as  policy  should  come   into   consideration,  I 
shall  consider  the  subject  from  both  points  of 
view,  beginning  with  the  former. 

In  considering  a  question  of  equity  we  must 
agree  upon  some  principle  determining  what 
we  are  to  understand  by  that  word.  Now  the 
customs  of  society  have  established  the  prin- 
ciple that  if  two  men  are  rendering  the  same 
service,  they  should  get  the  same  price  for  it, 
no  matter  if  it  costs  one  ten  times  as  much  as 
it  does  the  other.  For  example,  if  a  very 
skilful  dairyman  should  learn  to  make  but- 
ter with  half  the  work  that  other  dairymen 
make  it,  and  should  bring  that  butter  to  a 
market  where  the  selling  price  was  forty  cents 
a  pound,  it  would  not  be  equitable  for  the 
buyer  to  say  to  him :  "  Although  I  have  been 
giving  forty  cents  a  pound  for  butter  to  oth- 
ers, yet  I  will  only  give  you  twenty  cents,  and 
will  not  allow  any  one  else  to  give  you  more, 
because  you  make  two  pounds  as  easily  as 
those  other  sellers  make  one."  If  the  reader 


70 

will  not  accept  this  principle,  then  he  need 
not  proceed  any  further  in  this  chapter,  be- 
cause it  is  on  this  principle  that  the  conclu- 
sions are  based.  But  if  he  does  accept  it,  then 
he  must  do  so  to  its  fullest  extent,  and  admit 
that  if  one  man  does  the  work  of  ten  thou- 
sand,-there  is  nothing  positively  unjust  in 
paying  him  the  wages  of  ten  thousand  men. 
This  may  seem  to  be  carrying  the  principle  a 
great  deal  further,  but  still  the  principle  it- 
self remains  the  same.  Questions  of  justice, 
considered  apart  from  questions  of  policy,  be- 
long rather  to  the  instincts  than  to  the  reason, 
and  I  confess  that  my  instincts  are  such  that 
I  see  nothing  unjust  in  paying  one  man  the 
wages  of  ten  thousand  for  doing  the  work  of 
ten  thousand.  Let  us  now  see  how  a  few 
men  did  the  work  of  ten  times. as  many  thou- 
sand. 

Before  railways  were  built,  the  people  of 
Boston,  New  York,  Baltimore,  and  other  cities 
could  be  supplied  with  flour  only  from  farms 
near  the  seaboard  or  watercourses,  or  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of  the  cities.  A 
farmer  in  the  middle  of  Pennsylvania,  New 
York,  or  Ohio  could  not  get  his  wheat  to  mar- 
ket without  carting  it  to  some  canal  or  navi- 


ON   THE   LABOE   QUESTION.  71 

gable  river.  So  laborious  was  this  to  farmers 
who  lived  many  miles  from  other  means  of 
transportation  that  they  often  burned  their  corn 
as  fuel,  because  it  did  not  pay  to  carry  it  to 
market.  The  reader  may  calculate  for  himself 
how  many  millions  of  men  would  be  required 
to  transport  all  the  flour  we  eat  from  the  farms 
to  the  cities  on  our  Atlantic  seaboard  if  we  had 
no  railways. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  construction  of  railways 
was  only  fairly  commenced ;  and  it  was  doubt- 
ful if  they  could  be  successful  on  a  large  scale. 
But  a  few  far-sighted  capitalists  saw  that  if 
such  a  road  were  built  through  New  York 
State,  a  few  thousand  men,  by  running  the 
railway,  would  do  the  work  of  as  many  mill- 
ions in  transporting  the  products  of  farms  to 
the  seaboard.  Probably  very  few  believed 
them.  At  least  only  a  few  men  were  ready  to 
invest  their  fortunes  in  the  enterprise,  and  so 
it  was  by  these  few  that  the  new  roads  were 
first  inaugurated  on  so  large  a  scale.  The  re- 
sult was  that  the  productiveness  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  New  York  State  was  increased  many 
fold.  The  railroad  was  soon  doing  the  work 
of  a  hundred  thousand  men  ;  perhaps  I  should 
be  nearer  the  truth  if  I  said  a  million. 


72 

Now  what  ought  the  people  of  New  York 
State  to  have  said  to  the  leading  men  of  the 
enterprise  when  their  roads  got  going  ?  Should 
they  have  said :  You  are  making  too  much  mon- 
ey off  of  your  road ;  although  your  organization 
is  doing  the  work  of  a  hundred  thousand  men, 
you  are  yourself  only  one  man,  and  shall  only 
have  the  pay  of  one  man?  It  does  not  seem 
to  me  that  this  would  have  been  right.  But 
if  we  consider  that  it  would  be  right  to  allow 
him  the  pay  of  more  than  one  man  for  his 
services  in  building  the  road,  by  what  principle 
shall  we  learn  where  to  stop?  If  two  men, 
why  not  three?  If  three,  why  not  four?  If 
four,  why  not  a  thousand  ?  If  a  thousand, 
why  not  a  hundred  thousand? 

Facts  make  the  principle  that  govern  the 
case.  The  projector  might  have  said  in  reply : 
My  railroad  is  doing  the  work  of  one  hundred 
thousand  men,  and  I  must  have  the  pay  of  one 
hundred  thousand  men  as  long  as  I  live,  and 
my  heirs  must  have  it  as  long  as  the  road  lasts. 
If  we  estimate  the  pay  of  one  man  to  be  five 
hundred  dollars  a  year,  he  would  then  have 
been  demanding  fifty  millions  of  dollars  per 
year  in  perpetuity  for  his  services. 

But  society  did  not  concede  any  such  claim 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  73 

on  his  part  any  more  than  it  tried  to  restrict 
his  profit  to  the  pay  of  one  man.  It  simply 
said  to  him,  You  have  got  your  road  and  we 
will  pay  you  the  lowest  price  at  which  we  can 
get  our  transportation  done;  but  we  give  you 
notice  that  now,  you  having  taught  us  what 
good  a  railway  can  do,  we  will  build  all  the 
roads  we  want  for  ourselves,  and  we  will  not 
"allow  you  a  dollar  more  for  what  you  do  for  us 
with  your  railroad  than  we  have  to  pay  other 
people  for  the  same  service.  This,  it  seems  to 
me,  was  the  just  and  natural  solution  of  the 
problem. 

In  the  process  we  have  been  examining  is 
involved  a  principle  which  it  is  most  necessary 
to  understand.  We  see  it  in  all  the  operations 
of  business  and  manufacture,  yet  we  are  prone 
to  overlook  it;  I  must,  therefore,  ask  your  care- 
ful attention  to  some  further  illustrations  of  it. 
Suppose  a  tribe  of  Patagonians  who  gain  their 
subsistence  by  killing  birds  with  bows  and  ar- 
rows. With  the  utmost  industry,  each  of  them 
can  only  kill,  on  an  average,  two  birds  a  day. 
A  lame  but  skilful  civilized  man  comes  among 
them  with  a  supply  of  guns,  sulphur,  saltpetre, 
and  lead.  With  the  charcoal  which  they  can 
supply  him  he  proceeds  to  make  gunpowder, 


74  A   PLAIN  MAN  8   TALK 

and  with  the  lead  to  mould  bullets.  He  now 
says  to  them,  It  takes  one  of  yon  a  whole  day 
to  kill  two  birds.  I  cannot  kill  any  birds  at 
all  myself  because  I  am  lame ;  but  I  can  show 
you  how  each  of  you  can  kill,  not  two  birds  in 
a  day,  but  fifty.  Whoever  makes  powder  and 
shot  in  the  way  I  show,  and  uses  one  of  my 
guns  in  the  way  I  will  direct,  can  kill  forty- 
eight  birds  more  per  day  than  he  now  does. 
In  return  for  this  service  you  must  give  me 
half  the  extra  birds  which  my  skill  enables 
you  to  shoot :  that  is,  each  of  you  must  give 
me  twenty -four  birds  out  of  every  fifty,  or 
their  equivalent. 

It  is  evidently  for  their  interest  to  accept 
such  an  offer.  He  shows  them  how  to  get  the 
charcoal  by  burning  wood;  he  weighs  out  the 
materials  for  the  powder,  and  shows  them  how 
to  use  them.  He  melts  the  lead  and  makes  it 
into  shot ;  shows  them  how  to  shoot,  and  very 
soon  each  man  who  uses  one  of  the  guns  is 
bringing  in  fifty  birds  a  day,  which  is  more 
than  they  all  can  eat. 

If  the  tribe  is  a  hundred  strong,  its  members 
are  now,  in  combination  with  the  owner  of  the 
guns,  doing  the  work  of  twenty-five  hundred 
men ;  and  the  owner  is  doing  the  work  of 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  75 

twenty- four  hundred  men,  and  getting  the  pay 
of  twelve  hundred.  Getting  nearly  half  the 
whole  product,  he  has  nearly  half  as  much  to 
eat  as  the  whole  tribe. 

Now,  is  there  anything  inequitable  in  this? 
If  the  tribe  should  say  to  him:  "Look  here, 
pale  face ;  you  have  not  shot  a  single  bird,  nor 
put  in  a  stroke  of  work,  unless  you  call  it 
work  to  weigh  out  the  materials  for  making 
powder.  Our  labor  has  made  the  powder; 
our  legs  have  carried  us  through  the  swamps. 
You  have  no  business  getting  more  birds  than 
any  of  the  rest  of  us,  and  you  shall  have  no 
more."  Would  that  be  exactly  fair?  Ques- 
tions as  to  whether  a  thing  is  or  is  not  fail- 
must  ultimately  depend  upon  the  inner  con- 
science of  the  judge ;  so  I  leave  this  question 
to  the  conscience  of  the  reader,  only  remark- 
ing thaii  I  myself  see  nothing  wicked  or  un- 
just in  the  arrangement  by  which  the  one 
civilized  man  gets  half  the  product. 

Now  what  is  the  principle  concealed  in  this 
illustration  ?  It  is  that  labor  alone  is  not  suf- 
ficient to  produce  the  things  necessary  for  our 
welfare  to  the  best  advantage.  To  make  a 
pair  of  boots  to  the  best  advantage  requires 
something  more  than  the  mere  labor  put  into 


76  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

them.  It  requires  the  know-how  and  the 
show-how.  Just  as  the  Patagouians  gained 
their  birds  through  the  help  of  the  man  who 
did  no  shooting,  but  knew  how  it  ought  to  be 
done,  and  showed  them  how  to  do  it ;  so  boots 
are  made,  not  merely  by  tanners  and  boot- 
makers alone,  but  by  the  labor  of  these  men 
combined  with  the  knowledge  and  direction 
|  of  business-managers.  Clearly  the  latter  are 
entitled  to  a  share  in  the  product. 

You  reply,  perhaps,  Grant  that  they  are  en- 
titled to  a  share.  But  a  great  many  of  them 
get  too  large  a  share. 

But  by  what  principle  will  you  decide  what 
share  they  shall  get?  Must  they  all  get  the 
same  share?  In  that  case  the  good  manager 
and  the  bad  manager  would  be  paid  exactly 
the  same  profits.  The  latter  might  buy  poor 
leather,  might  fail  to  take  good  care  of  it, 
might  let  his  machinery  be  badly  used,  might 
mismanage  his  business  in  every  way  without 
suffering  for  it,  if  you  adopted  any  such  princi- 
ple. It  is  evident  that  we  must  have  some 
way  of  letting  a  good  manager  get  more  of 
r  the  product  than  a  bad  one.  If  you  reflect 
how  difficult  it  would  be  to  find  out  whether 
the  business  was  well  or  badly  managed,  you 


ON   THE  LABOR   QUESTION.  77 

will  see  the  impossibility  of  fixing  any  definite 
rate  of  profit  for  the  manager. 

\This  correct  rate  of  profit,  which  it  would^ 
be  so  hard  for  the  wisest  man  to  fix  by  investi-j 
gation,  is  determined  by  our  system  of  free 
competition  among  managers.  We  simply  say  ' 
to  every  manager :  "  Do  the  very  best  you  can. 
Direct  your  inen  in  the  most  efficient  way  you 
know  how,  and  manage  your  business  with  the 
least  waste.     Whatever  profits  you  can  make 
in  this  way  over  and  above  your  fellow-mana- 
gers you  are  entitled  to,  and  no  more.    If  they 
do  better,  then  you  must  go  into  some  other 
business.     If  you  do  better- than  any  of  them, 
take  the  profit  which  will  thus  come  to  you." 

Please  remember  that  under  our  system  no 
man  and  no  body  of  men  is  required  to  work 
under  a  manager,  and  to  accept  his  know-how 
and  show-how,  if  he  does  not  want  to  do  so. 
Every  workman  in  the  factory,  every  brick- 
layer who  helps  in  building  a  house,  is  at  per- 
fect liberty  to  sell  his  own  services  directly  to^ 
the  public  if  he  finds  it  advantageous  so  to  do. 
If  workmen  find  that  the  managers  who  di- 
rect them  are  getting  an  undue  share  of  the 
proceeds,  they  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  form 
co-operative  associations,  and  thus  secure  all 


78  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

the  profits  themselves.  But,  if  they  find  that 
they  get  better  wages  from  the  manager  than 
they  can  earn  by  working  for  themselves,  then 
there  is  nothing  inequitable  in  the  manager 
getting  as  much  advantage  of  his  skill  as  the 
competition  of  his  fellow-managers  will  per- 
mit his  getting. 

In  view  of  these  facts  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  quotation  with  which  I  opened  this  talk 
should  be  expressed  thus : 

"  There  must  be  something  wrong  in  a  sys- 
tem under  which  one  man  is  allowed  to  ren- 
der a  hundred  million  dollars'  worth  of  ser- 
vices to  his  fellow-men,  and  the  people  of  this 
country  are  determined  to  do  something  to- 
wards rectifying  it." 


ON   THE   LABOK    QUESTION.  79 


IX. 

WAS  IT  GOOD  FOR  US  THAT  WE  ALLOWED 
ONE  MAN  TO  MAKE  A  HUNDRED  MILLION 
DOLLARS? 

THE  reader  may  possibly  object  to  the  last 
chapter,  that  it  dealt  in  the  equities  of  the 
case,  and  therefore  had  a  little  too  much  sen- 
timent mixed  up  with  it.  He  may  say  that, 
it  is  not  a  question  of  equity  at  all,  but  one  of 
public  advantage  or  disadvantage,  and  may 
claim  that  the  subject  should  be  treated  from 
this  point  of  view. 

I  am  perfectly  willing  to  discuss  the  sub- 
ject on  this  basis,  because  then  the  foundation 
is  a  great  deal  stronger  than  before.  If  you 
choose  to  follow  me  carefully,  leisurely,  and 
thoughtfully,  you  cannot  fail  to  see  that  it  is 
for  your  good  and  for  mine  that  any  man  who 
wants  to  be  a  capitalist,  and  who  has  a  talent 
for  business  management,  should  be  allowed 
to  gain  all  the  wealth  he  can,  whether  one  :, 
million  dollars  or  one  hundred  millions,  by 


80  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

legitimate  business  enterprises;  and  that  the 
'more  ho  gains  in  this  way  the  better  for  us  all. 

The  common  belief  seems  to  be  that,  when 
• 

a  man  gets  very  rich,  he  does  it  by  collecting 
wealth  which,  but  for  him,  would  have  been 
gained  by  somebody  else,  who,  perhaps,  de- 
served it  better.  There  are  few  or  no  opin- 
ions, generally  held  by  men,  which  are  false 
under  all  conditions  and  in  their  entirety.  So, 
before  we  deny  this  popular  doctrine,  let  us 
see  in  what  cases  it  may  be  true.  There  is, 
undoubtedly,  a  great  deal  of  speculation  in 
the  business  world  in  which  one  man  can  gain 
only  what  another  loses.  It  amounts  to  about 
the  same  thing  as  betting  on  the  future  prices 
of  stocks  or  goods.  Thousands  of  people  go 
into  Wall  Street  to  speculate.  The  large  ma- 
jority are  the  so-called  "  lambs,"  who  are  not 
so  wise  as  they  think.  The  sharper  men  win 
the  bets  made  with  them,  and  thus  grow  rich. 
Fortunes  won  in  this  way  are  not  of  the 
slightest  concern  to  any  one  except  those  who 
make  or  lose.  None  of  your  interests  are  af- 
fected by  some  Wall  Street  shark  gaining  a 
hundred  dollars  or  a  thousand  from  each  of 
a  thousand  other  speculators.  If  you  do  not 
want  to  suffer,  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  keep 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  81 

out  of  Wall  Street.  If  yon  have  been  a  "  lamb  " 
yon  have  only  yourself  to  blame.  If  yon  have 
not,  yon  have  lost  nothing.  Leaving  ont  this 
exceptional  case,  which,  as  I  have  said,  is  of 
no  public  concern  to  anybody  but  those  who 
engage  in  speculation,  the  only  way  in  which 
a  man  can  make  a  fortune  of  one  hundred 
million  dollars  is  by  doing  one  hundred  mill- 
ion dollars'  worth  of  good,  probably  several 
times  over,  to  his  fellow-men. 

The  question  now  before  us  may  be  con- 
sidered under  several  different  aspects.  We 
might  first  inquire  whether  there  is  any  pos- 
sible way  of  stopping  a  man  who  wants  to 
be  rich  from  making  all  the  money  he  can. 
If  wre  found  that  this  was  not  possible,  we 
might  dispose  of  the  whole  matter  by  saying 
that  it  is  of  no  use  to  trouble  ourselves  about 
it  because  we  cannot  help  ourselves.  But  I 
do  not  propose  to  dispose  of  the  question  in 
this  simple  way.  I  want  the  reader  to  put 
the  question  to  himself  in  such  forms  as  the 
following : 

If  we  could  persuade  or  force  a  man  not  to 
accumulate  more  than  a  certain  fixed  amount 
of  wealth — say  one  hundred  thousand  dollars 
— would  it  be  to  our  interest  to  do  so  ? 


82  A   PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

If,  when  Mr.  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  had 
made  one  hundred  thousand  dollars,  he  had 
said  to  himself,  "  This  is  as  much  wealth  as 
one  needs  or  ought  to  possess ;  I  will,  there- 
fore, retire  from  business,  and  make  no  more 
money,"  would  we  have  been  better  or  worse 
off  on  account  of  that  resolution  on  his  part? 
To  answer  this  question,  we  must  examine 
the  history  of  the  case,  and  learn  how  Cor- 
nelius Vanderbilt  gained  his  wealth.  The 
reader  probably  knows  this  as  well  as  I  do ; 
so  all  I  need  to  do  is  to  give  a  short  summary 
of  the  well-known  facts  in  the  case. 

When  still  quite  young,  Cornelius  Vander- 
bilt was  the  owner  of  several  small  steamboats, 
which  he  managed  himself.  He  was  so  suc- 
cessful that,  before  reaching  middle  age,  he 
was,  for  those  times,  a  very  wealthy  man. 
Did  he  become  so  by  injuring  any  one  else  ? 
I  think  not.  He  never  forced  a  man  on  board 
his  boat  who  did  not  want  to  go ;  never  car- 
ried a  pound  of  freight  which  the  owner  did 
not  want  carried;  never  charged  more  for  fare 
or  freight  than  the  people  to  whom  he  ren- 
dered the  service  were  willing  to  give.  No- 
body ever  paid  him  for  his  service  more  than 
he  would  have  had  to  pay  any  one  else.  His 


ON   THE    LABOE,    QUESTION.  83 

only  advantage  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  knew 
how  to  render  more  service  at  a  given  outlay 
of  labor  and  money  than  anybody  else  did. 
He  bought  the  kind  of  boats  which  other  peo- 
ple found  it  pleasant  to  travel  upon.  He  sent 
them  to  the  places  where  they  were  most  want- 
ed, and  took  people  where  they  most  wanted 
to  go,  at  the  times  most  convenient  for  them. 
He  selected  good  men  to  run  his  boats,  and, 
while  putting  into  them  whatever  the  public 
liked  to  have,  he  was  careful  never  to  waste 
labor  or  money  in  doing  what  people  did  not 
want  done. 

As  he  made  money  he  bought  more  steam- 
boats, thus  extending  his  operations  over  a 
much  wider  area  than  before.  Thus  he  car- 
ried more  and  more  people  where  they  want- 
ed to  go,  and  brought  more  and  more  goods 
where  they  were  wanted.  It  was  through  be- 
coming rich  that  he  was  enabled  to  build  these 
new  boats ;  and,  having  built  them,  he  man- 
aged them  on  the  same  principle  as  before; 
that  is,  he  sent  them  where  thousands  of  peo- 
ple were  most  desirous  to  go,  and  brought 
goods  from  various  parts  of  the  continent  to 
the  places  where  people  most  wanted  them. 

When  he  had  thus  gained  several  millions 


84  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

of  dollars  by  rendering,  we  may  suppose,  a 
dollar's  worth  of  service  to  each  of  several 
millions  of  people,  he  saw  that  railway  mana- 
gers did  not  work  together  to  the  best  advan- 
tage, and  did  not  convey  their  millions  of  pas- 
sengers and  their  enormous  quantities  of  freight 
in  the  most  advantageous  and  economical  man- 
ner. So  he  proceeded  to  purchase  the  stock 
of  the  Harlem  Railroad,  the  Hudson  River, 
the  New  York  Central,  and  the  Lake  Shore 
and  Michigan  Southern,  and  finally  succeed- 
ed in  inducing  the  owners  of  a  line  of  road 
extending  all  the  way  from  New  York  to  Chi- 
cago to  place  the  whole  under  his  manage- 
ment. The  result  of  this  was,  that  he  brought 
the  breadstuffs  of  the  West  to  New  York 
State  more  cheaply  and  expeditiously  than 
they  were  ever  brought  before,  and  thus  en- 
abled millions  of  people  to  buy  their  flour  at 
a  lower  price  than  they  would  otherwise  have 
had  to  pay. 

As  in  his  early  steamboat  life  he  never  de- 
manded from  one  of  his  million  of  passengers 
more  money  for  a  ticket  than  the  passenger 
deemed  it  to  his  advantage  to  pay,  and  never 
charged  a  dollar  more  freight  than  merchants 
were  willing  to  give.  Competing  lines  were 


ON   THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  85 

in  operation,  and  every  one  had  the  right  to 
send  by  other  lines,  or  not  to  send  at  all.  The 
result  was  a  continual  addition  to  his  fortune, 
amounting  to  several  millions  of  dollars  a  year. 

At  this  point,  dear  reader,  do  not  abandon 
business  for  sentiment  by  saying  that  I  am 
eulogizing  a  very  selfish  man.  I  am  only^ 
stating  the  essential  facts  and  leaving  out  the| 
non-essential  ones.  You  may,  if  you  choose, 
call  him  a  greedy,  grasping,  bloated,  inhuman 
being.  But  that  would  be  mere  sentiment 
and  not  business.  If  the  ten  millions  of  peo- 
ple to  whom  he  brought  bread  all  the  way 
from  Chicago,  and  the  hundreds  of  millions 
whom  he  carried  on  his  railway  were  bene- 
fited by  the  services,  as  they  undoubtedly 
were,  his  personal  qualities  do  not  affect  the 
question  at  all.  Not  one  man  out  of  a  thou- 
sand ever  set  eyes  upon  him,  or  was  in  any 
way  injured  by  his  selfishness.  Let  us,  there- 
fore, confine  ourselves  to  a  business  view  of 
the  facts. 

Suppose,  now,  that  Mr.  Vanderbilt,  when  he 
found  his  little  steamboats  so  successful  tliat 
he  had  gained  a  hundred  thousand  dollars 
from  them,  had  said  :  "  This  is  money  enough 
for  one  man,  and  I  will  now  let  some  one  else 


A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALlr 


manage  this  business,  while  I,  to  show  my 
belief  in  the  dignity  and  rights  of  labor,  will 
vwork  as  a  mere  hand  on  a  steamboat.3?  What 
would  have  been  the  result  ?  The  enterprise 
which  subsequently  sent  a  line  of  steamers  to 
Galveston  and  the  Isthmus  would  either  have 
been  wanting,  or  would  have  been  delayed 
for  several  years.  A  million  of  people  would 
have  had  to  wait  two  or  three  years  for  the 
advantages  of  shipping  and  travelling  which 
Vanderbilt  gave  them  ;  and,  when  they  finally 
got  them,  the  boats  would  not  have  been  so 
much  to  their  liking,  and  freights  would 
have  been  higher.  We  may  suppose  that 
the  disadvantage  of  a  million  of  people 
would  have  averaged  one  or  two  dollars  a 
year  to  each  person  for  a  number  of  years. 
Of  course  they  would  never  have  been  aware 
of  these  disadvantages,  nor  think  that  the  ec- 
centric man  who  was  working  as  a  common 
hand  when  he  had  the  ability  to  be  a  first- 
class  manager  would  have  served  them  much 
better  had  he  continued  to  manage.  But 
their  ignorance  would  not  have  changed  the 
fact  that  here  would  have  been  a  great  waste 
of  valuable  power. 

So  with  the  railways.     If  Vanderbilt  had 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  87 

not  got  control  of  the  roads  I  have  described, 
the  unity  of  management  which  is  so  neces- 
sary in  working  a  road  would  have  been  de- 
layed for  several  years  —  perhaps  until  the 
present  time — so  that  freight  and  passengers 
would  not  have  been  carried  so  expeditiously 
as  they  now  are.  Moreover,  the  managers, 
not  being  so  able  as  Vanderbilt  to  prevent  all 
loss  and  waste  on  the  road,  people  would 
probably  have  had  to  pay  a  little  more  on  the 
average  for  their  tickets.  Thus  everybody 
would  have  been  worse  off,  rather  than  better. 
It  is  on  a  large  scale  what  we  supposed  to 
take  place  among  the  Patagonians  in  our  last 
talk.  The  man  who  merely  showed  them 
how  to  use  a  gun  benefited  not  only  himself, 
but  them  also,  by  enabling  them  to  get  food 
much  more  advantageously  than  before. 

But  there  is  more  yet  to  be  said.  Before 
we  can  consider  the  question  satisfactorily 
settled  we  must  inquire  who  got  the  benefit 
of  Vanderbilt' s  money  ?  Did  he  or  the  pub- 
lic get  the  good  of  it?  Here  I  have  to  make 
a  statement  which  at  first  blush  may  appear  a 
paradox ;  but  it  appears  so  only  to  those  who 
have  failed  to  look  clearly  at  the  facts.  I 
say  that  Vanderbilt  never  got  any  use  of  his 


money,  except  his  board,  clothing,  house- 
rent,  and  appliances  for  the  personal  pleasure 
and  comfort  of  himself  and  friends.  The 
sole  benefit  of  all  the  rest  of  his  wealth  went 
entirely  to  the  public.  It  is  one  of  the  great 
vices  of  our  times  that  we  think  and  talk  about 
wealthy  men  as  if  they  had  the  sole  enjoy- 
ment of  their  wealth.  But  all  they  really  en- 
joy is  the  laborious  privilege  of  managing  it 
and  the  sentimental  pleasure  of  calling  it 
theirs.  If  Yanderbilt  had  said,  "  Now  this  is 
my  railroad,  and  I  shall  not  carry  freight  on 
it  for  anybody  else,  and  will  only  bring  food 
for  my  own  family  and  give  excursions  to  my 
own  friends,"  then  the  case  would  have  been 
different  and  the  road  would  have  been  of  no 
use  to  the  public.  But  of  all  the  freight 
brought  over  the  road,  how  mlicli  did  Mr. 
Vanderbilt  ever  get  ?  Of  course,  you  know 
very  well,  not  enough  to  even  think  of  or 
mention. 

But,  you  may  reply,  everybody  else  who 
got  freight  carried  over  his  road  had  to  pay 
him  for  it.  Very  well,  what  did  he  do  with 
the  money  they  paid  him  ?  Nine  tenths  of  it 
he  paid  to  laborers.  .With  a  good  part  of  the 
other  tenth  he  laid  new  steel  rails  over  the 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  89 

whole  road  from  New  York  to  Chicago,  by 
which  passengers  and  freight  were  brought 
more  quickly  and  cheaply  than  ever  before. 
For  whose  benefit  was  that?  Evidently  it 
was  for  the  benefit  of  the  passengers  and  the 
public,  because  after  the  steel  rails  were  laid 
they  paid  Vanderbilt  less  money  for  the  ser- 
vice than  they  did  before,  and  they  got  carried 
faster.  But,  you  may  say,  they  still  had  to 
pay  him.  Yes,  but  how  insignificant  the 
amount  they  paid  him  compared  with  the 
value  of  the  service  rendered.  Let  us  again 
ask  what  he  did  with  the  money  he  received 
for  this  important  service?  A  portion  of  it 
he  expended  in  building  himself  a  house  and 
filling  it  with  pictures  and  furniture.  What 
he  expended  in  this  \vay  was  all  that  he  ap- 
plied to  his  own  uses.  It  was  a  small  frac- 
tion of  what  lie  received  for  freight.  He 
spent  the  remainder  directly  or  indirectly  in 
building  new  roads  and  in  other  business  en- 
terprises for  the  public.  When  I  say  he  did 
this  indirectly  I  mean  that  he  loaned  the 
money  to  others  to  expend  in  this  way,  and 
thus  enabled  them  to  build  railroads  and 
steamboats,  which  they  otherwise  could  not 
have  built. 


90  A   PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

I  think  T  have  made  it  clear  beyond  a  cavil 
that  it  was  to  your  benefit  and  my  benefit 
ithat  Yanderbilt  did  not  stop  making  money, 
jto  become  a  steamboat  hand,  but  that  his 
grasping  love  of  wealth  prompted  him  to  en- 
gage in  managing  steamboats  and  railways 
with  such  success  that  he  accumulated  more 
than  a  hundred  millions  of  dollars.  I  hope 
Yanderbilts  will  continue  to  arise  until  our 
whole  industrial  organization  is  so  perfected 
that  everything  we  want  shall  be  made  and 
brought  to  us  at  the  lowest  possible  price. 


ON    THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  91 


X. 

THE  CAPITALIST  AND  WHAT  HE  HAS  LONE 

FOR  US. 

THE  lessons  I  have  tried  to  teach  in  the  last 
two  chapters  are  so  important  that  I  must  beg 
leave  to  recapitulate  and  enforce  some  of  their 
points.  I  deem  this  necessary  for  the  very 
reason  that  they  are  conclusions  which  run 
counter  to  our  ordinary  notions. 

One  of  the  notions  to  which  I  allude  is,  that 
wealth  is  accumulated  for  the  sole  benefit  of 
its  owner :  for  instance,  that  Vanderbilt's  hun- 
dred millions  went  for  Vanderbilt's  sole  ben- 
efit,, so  that  nobody  else  has  any  interest  in  it, 
or  at  least  only  a  slight  interest.  Yet  it  is 
only  necessary  to  open  our  eyes  and  look  close- 
ly at  the  state  of  ^ the  case  to  see  that  this  no- 
tion is  all  wrong.  The  great  proposition,  to 
•which  all  that  I  have  said  converges,  is  that 
great  accumulations  of  capital,  whether  by  ari 
individual  or  a  corporation,  are  really  em- 


92  A   PLAIN  MAN'S  TALK 

ployed  for  the  public  benefit,  so  that  all  get 

k  the  good  of  them. 

What  did  Vanderbilt's  wealth  originally 
consist  in  ?  As  I  showed  in  the  last  chapter, 
one  of  its  large  items  were  the  steel  rails 
which  were  laid  from  New  York  to  Chicago. 
If  he  and  his  associates  had  not  accumulated 

-  great  fortunes  they  could  never  have  com- 
manded the  money  to  purchase  these  rails, 
and  the  bread  which  you  and  I  now  eat  could 
not  have  been  brought  so  cheaply  from  the 
West  to  our  homes.  In  a  word,  Vanderbilt's 
great  wealth  consisted  very  largely  in  railroads 
employed,  not  for  his  benefit,  but  for  that  of 
the  public,  and  from  which  he  did  not  get 
materially  more  good  than  anybody  else  did, 
because  even  the  dividends  which  he  gained 
were  expended  in  enlarging  and  improving 
the  roads. 

Now  what  is  true  of  this  particular  part  of 
Vanderbilt's  fortune  is  true  of  all  the  accu- 
mulations of  the  capitalists,  great  and  small. 
A  capitalist  may  be  defined  as  a  man  who 
saves  up  his  money  to  gain  interest  upon  it. 
But  the  only  way  in  which  he  can  gain  inter- 
est is  by  employing  it  for  the  benefit  of  his 
fellow-men,  or  getting  somebody  else  to  em- 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  93 

ploy  it  in  this  way.  That  is  to  say,  the  money 
which  he  saves  goes  to  build  a  railway  for  con- 
veying goods  to  and  from  distant  communi- 
ties, a  factory  to  make  clothes  for  the  contin- 
ually increasing  population,  a  ship  to  convey 
goods  to  a  foreign  country,  a  house  to  be  oc- 
cupied by  people  who  cannot  afford  to  buy 
one  for  themselves,  or  some  other  permanent 
agency  for  supplying  the  public  wants./ 

This  point  is  so  important  that  I  must  ask 
leave  to  illustrate  it  by  continuing  our  little 
romance  about  the  visitor  to  the  Patagonians. 
We  left  him  with  a  food  supply  of  twenty- 
four  hundred  birds  a  day,  contributed  to  his 
support  by  the  tribe.  This  would  be  too  ab- 
surd to  continue,  because  the  whole  tribe  could 
not  eat  half  of  what  \vas  shot.  The  tribe  would 
say :  "  We  cannot  possibly  eat  all  these  birds, 
let  us  stop  and  build  better  wigwams."  So 
the  lame  man  would  say,  "  instead  of  shooting 
all  those  birds  for  me,  go  to  work  and  build 
me  a  hundred  wigwams.  You  must  make  one 
of  them  very  fine  for  my  occupation,  but  the 
others  are  to  be  my  property  to  dispose  of  as  I 
please."  When  this  is  done  the  question  arises, 
What  will  the  man  do  with  all  those  wigwams  ? 
As  he  can  only  occupy  one  of  them,  he  can 


94  A   PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

only  say  to  the  tribe,  "  Occupy  the  others 
yourselves,  and  pay  me  what  rent  you  can  for 
them."  But  when  he  got  the  rent  he  could 
do  nothing  with  it  but  get  other  tilings  for  the 
support  of  himself  and  the  tribe,  and  so  in  the 
end  the  latter  would  be  getting  nearly  all  the 
benefit  of  the  man's  skill,  and  this  by  the 
sheer  necessity  of  the  case.  I  think  none  of 
their  moralists  and  philosophers  would  lament 
a  state  of  things  in  which  one  man  should  be 
allowed  to  own  a  hundred  wigwams. 

The  fact  is  that  until  we  think  carefully 
over  the  subject  we  can  have  no  conception 
how  valuable  one  man's  foresight  and  enter- 
prise may  be  to  millions  of  his  fellow -cit- 
izens. <I  recollect,  in  speaking  to  an  intelli- 
gent and  thoughtful  Knight  of  Labor  of  the 
value  of  Vanderbilt's  enterprise,  he  raised 
what  was,  in  principle,  the  very  sound  objec- 
tion that  if  Vanderbilt  had  not  done  what  he 
did  somebody  else  would,  and  that  there  was 
therefore  no  particular  reason  why  Vanderbilt 
should  reap  so  large  a  reward.  I  say  the 
principle  on  which  this  objection  was  founded 
is  perfectly  correct,  because  if  there  are 
three,  ten,  or  fifty  people  capable,  without 
any  extraordinary  sacrifice  on  their  own  part, 


OK   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  95 

of  rendering  services  worth  many  millions  of 
dollars  to  their  fellows,  it  is  perfectly  just  that 
they  should  be  made  to  compete  with  each 
other  until  their  compensation  is  brought  down 
to  its  lowest  point.  If  then  there  were  twen- 
ty or  fifty  men  able  arid  ready  to  do  what 
Vanderbilt  did,  it  would  have  been  perfectly 
right  that  society  should  have  commanded 
their  services  on  the  cheapest  terms  it  could. 

But  let  us  now  look  closely  at  the  matter 
and  see  how  what  may  seem  to  us  at  first 
sight  a  most  insignificant  fact  may  have  very 
important  consequences.  The  reason  why 
Vanderbilt  was  able  to  collect  so  large  a  sum 
from  the  public  for  services  rendered  was  not 
merely  that  nobody  else  could  have  rendered 
these  services  at  any  time,  but  that  he  was  the 
only  man  in  the  field  at  the  moment  ready 
and  willing  to  go  ahead  with  his  enterprises. 
Now  let  us  calculate  the  money  value  to  the 
public  of  this  mere  willingness  to  go  ahead, 
coupled  with  the  ability  to  see  further  than 
his  fellow-men  did.  At  a  moderate  calcula- 
tion there  were,  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago,  ten 
millions  of  people  to  whom  a  railway  system 
connecting  New  York  with  what  was  then  the 
West  would  have  been  worth  ten  cents  a  clay 


96  A   PLAIN   MAN  8   TALK 

each,  or  say  thirty  dollars  a  year.  This  being 
the  case,  if  Vanderbilt's  enterprise  did  nothing 
more  than  get  each  section  of  the  road  and 
each  step  in  its  management  into  operation  a 
year  sooner  than  others  would  have  done,  he 
rendered  his  fellows  a  service  worth  three 
hundred  millions  of  dollars,  merely  by  his 
foresight  and  courage,  to  say  nothing  of  his 
organizing  ability. 

Successful  capitalists  are  for  the  most  part 
the  sharpest  business  men  of  the  community. 
This  goes  almost  without  saying,  for  otherwise 
they  would  never  have  amassed  wealth,  or,  if 
they  had  amassed  it,  would  have  lost  it  when 
they  went  into  business.  What  do  we  mean 
when  we  say  that  some  prominent  man  is  a 
sharp  man  of  business?  Judging  from  the 
newspapers  and  the  addresses  at  labor  assem- 
blies, we  should  suppose  this  to  mean  that  the 
man  had  learned  the  art  of  cheating  other  peo- 
ple out  of  the  results  of  their  labor.  I  have 
shown  in  previous  talks  how  groundless  this 
notion  is,  and  so  instead  of  discussing  it 
further  shall  try  to  find  the  true  answer  to  the 
question.  A  sharp  man  of  business  on  a  large 
scale — I  mean  one  who  successfully  manages 
new  and  great  enterprises — is  one  who  is  quick 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  97 

to  see  what  large  bodies  of  people  wapt,  and 
expert  in  the  rare  art  of  building  up  organized 
systems  to  supply  that  want.  We  are  so  ac- 
customed to  organized  systems  thus  built  up 
that  we  seldom  think  how  much  more  they  in- 
volve than  the  men  and  appliances  concerned 
with  them. 

Take  a  railway  for  example.  Of  material 
things  it  includes  a  road-bed,  the  rails,  the 
station,  the  engines,  and  the  cars.  Of  men  it 
includes  engineers,  brakemen,  conductors,  and 
other  employees  to  the  number  of  thousands. 
But  much  more  than  all  this  was  necessary  in 
order  that  the  railroad  might  perform  its  func- 
tions. Before  a  single  tie  was  laid,  before  a 
man  was  engaged  to  dig  out  the  road-bed,  it 
was  necessary  to  decide  where  the  road  should 
start  from,  through  what  towns  it  should  pass, 
and  whither  it  should  end.  Here  the  business 
qualities  of  the  capitalist  come  in.  The  man 
who  decides  these  things  successfully  is  one 
who  knows  what  thousands  of  his  fellow-men 
want,  not  only  now,  but  for  the  future ;  where 
towns  are  likely  to  grow  up,  and  what  prod- 
ucts will  be  wanted  at  the  terminus  of  the 
road.  The  labor  of  thousands  of  men  is  to  be 
employed  for  one  or  more  years  in  laying  the 


98  A    PLAIN    MAN  8    TALK 

road,  making  the  rails,  and  building  the  en- 
gines and  stations.  It  depends  upon  the  talent 
and  sound  judgment  of  the  originators  wheth- 
er this  labor  shall  be  in  great  part  wasted  by 
being  of  little  service  to  anybody,  or  whether 
it  shall  supply  a  hundred  thousand  people 
with  just  the  means  of  transportation  that 
they  most  want.  Now,  if  every  man  was 
born  with  the  talent  necessary  for  deciding 
where  the  road  should  run,  for  knowing  where 
to  find  the  best  engineers  to  lay  the  road  out, 
and  to  calculate  the  excavations  necessary ; 
how  and  where  to  get  the  engines  built,  and 
how  to  find  the  men  to  run  them,  and  then 
how  to  organize  their  work,  the  case  would  bo 
entirely  different  from  what  it  is.  As  a  mat- 
lter  of  fact  only  one  man  out  of  ten  thousand 
^can  do  all  this  successfully,  and  only  one  out  of 
a  hundred  thousand  can  do  it  in  the  most  ef- 
fective way.  If  we  could  value  men  by  the 
services  they  render  we  might  say  of  the  best 
organizer  in  the  United  States :  Here  is  a  man 
who  can  so  organize  railroads  through  popu- 
lous districts  as  to  save  a  million  of  his  fellow- 
men  a  dollar  a  year  each  by  securing  them 
cheaper  transportation  than  they  can  other- 
jwise  get.  He  is  therefore  worth  to  them  a 
(million  dollars  a  year. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  99 

Then,  after  the  road  is  built  and  in  opera- 
tion, it  may  be  worth  a  million  dollars  a  year 
to  its  owners  and  to  the  men  who  use  it  to 
have  it  managed  in  the  very  best  way.  You 
may  have  the  road  completed,  with  the  en- 
gines and  cars  and  men  all  at  work,  and  yet 
the  result  may  be  a  failure.  Men  are  contin- 
ually leaving  or  changing  their  occupations, 
and  new  ones  must  be  got  to  fill  their  places. 
Some  one  must  decide  what  duties  every  man 
shall  perform  and  must  see  that  he  is  trained 
in  their  performance.  There  must  be  a  sys- 
tem by  which  every  one  of  the  thousands 
of  employees  shall  do  the  right  thing,  in  the 
right  place,  and  at  the  right  time ;  if  he  does 
not,  accidents  will  happen,  passengers  will  be 
killed,  and  freight  will  be  lost  or  delayed. 
Now  this  is  something  which  does  not  happen 
of  itself,  but  requires  a  body  of  managers  of 
rare  qualities,  to  do  everything  in  the  best 
way. 

I  hope  I  have  justified  my  definition  that 
the  sharp  and  successful  man  of  business  is 
simply  one  who  can  render  great  services  to 
all  the  people  who  make  up  the  state.  What 
have  such  men  done  ?  The  question  will  an- 
swer itself  if  we  will  only  look  around  us. 


100  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

They  have  promoted  everything  that  is  good 
in  this  nineteenth  century.  They  have  not 
only  built  railways  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  and  set  them  going,  but  they 
have  founded  schools  and  colleges  and  built 
churches.  Had  no  one  ever  got  rich  we  should 
have  had  no  colleges  except  a  few  miserable 
ones  supported  by  the  state ;  we  should  have 
had  no  railways  ;  flour  would  have  been  worth 
ten  dollars  a  barrel  and  upward  in  all  cities ; 
labor  organizations  would  have  been  unknown, 
because  no  laborer  could  ever  have  spared  the 
time  to  organize  or  have  saved  the  money 
necessary  to  make  his  influence  felt. 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  101 


XI. 

WHAT  CAPITAL  HAS  DONE  FOR  THE  LABORER. 

WE  have  all  heard  a  great  deal  of  talk  about 
the  great  conflict  between  labor  and  capital. 
We  have  discussed  this  conflict  so  ardently  as 
to  forget  all  about  the  actual  facts  of  the  case ; 
and,  indeed,  I  doubt  if  one  man  out  of  twenty 
who  engages  in  the  discussion  ever  stops  to 
think  what  capital  really  is.  If  one  would 
only  stop  to  study  out  the  question  he  would 
see  that  no  such  conflict  could  have  any  sound 
reason  for  going  on,  and,  in  fact,  could  hardly 
arise  among  sensible  men.  In  saying  this  I 
do  not  deny  that  there  is  always  a  kind  of 
contest  in  progress.  Laborers  want,  and  right- 
fully want,  the  highest  wages  they  are  able  to 
command.  Employers  want,  and  rightfully 
want,  to  induce  them  to  work  as  cheaply  as 
possible.  But  the  efforts  to  which  the  two 
parties  are  thus  led  do  not  differ,  in  their  orig- 
inal nature,  from  those  which  have  been  go- 
ing on  ever  since  men-  began  to  make  procr- 

^~ 


(UKI7ERSIT7)) 


102 

ress,  and  which  must  continue  as  long  as  hu- 
manity exists  under  its  present  conditions. 
Everybody  who  sells  goods  wants  to  get  as 
much  as  he  can  for  them,  and  everybody  who 
buys  wants  to  get  them  as  cheaply  as  he  can. 
Sellers  are  on  the  search  for  good  buyers,  and 
buyers  are  on  the  lookout  for  good  bargains. 
In  the  same  way,  laborers  are  on  the  lookout 
for  good  employers,  and  employers  are  seek- 
ing for  cheap  and  efficient  laborers.  To  call 
a  contest  thus  arising  a  conflict  between  labor 
and  capital  is  as  great  a  misnomer  as  it  would 
be  to  call  a  higgling  and  dispute  between  a 
man  and  his  butcher  a  conflict  between  money 
and  beef.  It  is  not  the  beef  the  man  is  quarrel- 
ing with,  but  it  is  the  owner  of  the  beef.  It  is 
not  the  money  the  butcher  is  dealing  with,  but 
the  man.  In  the  same  way  the  laborer  is  deal- 
ing, not  with  capital,  but  with  the  owner  of 
capital.  This  misuse  of  words  is,  really,  a  source 
of  great  drawback  to  clear  thinking,  because  it 
leads  people  to  mistake  the  interests  of  society, 
and  to  engage  in  efforts  which  can  do  nothing 
but  harm  to  all.  To  avoid  this  evil,  let  us  see 
how  capital  and  capitalists  arose. 

In  our  colonial  times  there  was  very  little 
that  we  should  now  call  capital ;  only  such 


ON   THE   LABOB   QUESTION.  103 

things  as  the  horses,  ploughs,  and  farm-build- 
ings, the  implements  of  the  farmer,  the  stock 
in  trade  of  the  shop-keeper,  and  the  tools  of  the 
mechanic.  How  does  it  happen  that  we  have 
any  more  capital  now  than  in  colonial  times? 
We  can  readily  imagine  everything  to  have 
gone  on,  up  to  the  present  time,  just  as  it  did 
in  those  times,  without  railways,  steam  ma- 
chinery, great  warehouses,  paved  streets,  fine 
furniture.  Why  did  things  not  continue  so? 
I  reply,  it  was  because  certain  people  were  not 
satisfied  with  what  they  had,  but  wanted  to 
get  rich,  and  knew  how  to  do  it.  Now,  when 
a  man  wanted  to  get  rich,  how  did  he  have 
to  go  to  work?  Robbery  and  gambling  aside, 
there  was  but  one  possible  way ;  he  must  do 
something  that  his  fellow-men  wanted  to  have 
done,  and  which  they  wanted  so  badly  that 
they  were  willing  to  pay  a  great  deal  of  money 
to  get  it  done.  No  man  could  earn  a  dollar 
except  by  doing  something  for  his  fellow-men 
which  they  were  willing  to  pay  a  dollar  to 
have  done,  and  hence  something  which  they 
valued  at  more  than  one  dollar. 

Such,  I  say,  was  the  problem  presented  to 
every  man  who  wanted  to  make  money.  Now, 
if  a  man  was  only  a  common  laborer,  and  could 


104 

do  nothing  more  for  his  fellow-men  than  hun- 
dreds or  thousands  of  fellow-laborers  could 
do,  he  could  not  possibly  get  rich  very  fast, 
although  he  might  make  a  comfortable  living. 
Hence,  in  order  to  attain  his  end,  the  man 
who  wanted  to  get  rich  must  make,  buy,  or 
borrow  some  kind  of  appliances,  implements, 
or  machinery  which  would  enable  him  to  do 
more  work  for  his  fellow-men  than  he  could 
do  without  the  appliances.  For  example, 
some  of  these  men  found  that,  by  establishing 
a  line  of  stages  between  two  towns,  they  could 
render  valuable  services  to  hundreds  or  thou- 
sands of  their  fellow-men  who  wanted  to  trav- 
el, or  to  send  goods  from  one  city  to  another. 
So  they  bought  horses  and  stage-coaches,  built 
houses  of  entertainment,  and  set  to  work  car- 
rying passengers,  materials,  and  goods.  The 
horses,  coaches,  stables,  and  houses  of  enter- 
tainment were  then  the  capital  of  these  men. 
By  the  aid  of  that  capital  they  rendered  their 
fellow-men  services  many  times  greater  than 
they  could  have  rendered  without  the  capital. 
If  they  planned  their  work  with  judgment  and 
skill,  so  as  to  take  people  just  when  and  where 
they  wanted  to  be  taken  in  the  greatest  num- 
bers, they  made  money,  and  thus  many  of 
them  got  rich. 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  105 

Now  notice  certain  necessary  conditions  of 
these  enterprises.  It  was  impossible  to  get 
the  money  to  buy  the  horses  and  coaches  and 
build  the  stables  unless  some  one  saved  up 
money  which  he  could  have  spent  had  he  cho- 
sen to  do  so.  A  man  who  spent  all  his  in- 
come in  food  and  clothing  could  never  have 
got  money  to  buy  a  coach.  True,  he  might 
have  borrowed  the  money  from  his  neighbor. 
But  then  the  neighbor  must  have  saved  the 
money  up,  and  not  spent  it  on  food  and  cloth- 
ing, else  he  never  would  have  had  any  to  loan. 
Possibly  the  owner  of  the  coach  might  have 
bought  it  on  credit;  but,  in  this  case,  the 
maker  of  the  coach  must  have  been  able  to 
save  the  money  necessary  to  buy  the  material 
and  pay  the  wages  of  his  workmen.  We  thus 
reach  two  great  conclusions  : 

Firstly,  without  capital  we  should  all  now 
be  in  as  poor  a  condition  as  our  forefathers 
were  in  colonial  times. 

Secondly,  we  would  never  have  had  the  cap- 
ital unless  men  had  wanted  to  get  rich,  and 
had  saved  up  money  to  expend  in  making  or 
buying  things  with  which  to  render  greater 
services  to  their  fellow-men  than  they  could 
render  without  them. 


106  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

If,  from  these  small  beginnings  of  capital, 
we  come  down  to  the  present  time,  we  shall 
see  that  exactly  the  same  principles  are  now 
at  play  as  were  at  play  when  the  first  line  of 
stages  was  set  agoing.  Our  great  railway  man- 
agers were  the  successors  of  the  early  stage- 
drivers;  but,  instead  of  dealing  with  a  few 
hundreds  of  men,  they  are  dealing  with  mill- 
ions. They  could  never  have  built  their  rail- 
way unless  the  stockholders  had  saved  np 
money  to  invest  in  the  shares  or  bonds,  which 
money  was  necessary  to  pay  the  wages  of  the 
men  who  built  the  road.  Another  important 
point  is,  that  they  did  this  of  their  own  free 
will,  and  not  because  any  law  compelled  them. 
No  law  could  ever  have  been  passed  compel- 
ling Mr.  Vanderbilt  to  build  and  run  steam- 
boats, or  requiring  the  builders  of  the  great 
railways  to  invest  their  capital  in  such  enter- 
prises. 

What,  then,  is  capital?  I  answer,  capital 
means  the  houses  we  are  living  in,  the  farms 
and  farming  implements  which  produce  our 
food,  the  cattle  on  the  plains  from  which  we 
get  beef,  the  warehouses  which  hold  our  great 
stocks  of  food  and  clothing,  the  machinery 
which  makes  us  clothing  to  wear,  and  the  rail- 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  107 

ways  which  bring  things  where  we  can  get 
them.  Talking  about  the  oppressiveness  of 
capital  is  the  same  thing  as  talking  about  the 
oppressiveness  of  food,  clothing,  machinery, 
and  locomotives ;  that  is,  it  is  pure  nonsense. 
All  that  capital  can  possibly  do  for  us  is  to 
supply  our  wants.  It  can  no  more  be  used  to 
oppress  the  masses  than  a  wagon-load  of  bread 
can  be  used  to  starve  them.  It  is  impossible 
for  the  capitalist  himself  to  get  any  benefit 
from  his  capital  unless  he  uses  it  to  benefit  his 
fellow-men. 

I  now  fancy  the  reader  to  ask,  Do  you  then 
claim  that  we  are  in  no  danger  at  all  from  the 
powers  of  great  corporations,  whose  operations 
extend  over  the  whole  country?  Can  the 
whole  population  of  a  city  or  a  state  afford  to 
depend  upon  a  few  powerful  and  compact  or- 
ganizations for  its  supply  of  the  necessaries 
of  life?  If  the  consolidation  of  capital  goes 
on  for  fifty  years  as  it  has  for  the  past  twrenty 
it  is  possible  that  a  few  great  establishments 
will  do  nearly  all  the  manufacturing  for  the 
land.  Can  we  afford  to  leave  them  entirely 
unrestricted  ?  To  all  this  I  reply : 

Firstly,  granting  that  we  are  going  to  sub- 
ject these  corporations  to  legislative  control, 


108  A  PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

the  very  first  prerequisite  of  such  action  is  a 
clear  perception  of  the  functions  of  the  capi- 
talist and  of  his  relation  to  the  rest  of  the 
community,  as  I  have  tried  to  set  them  forth. 
Hence,  if  you  choose,  you  may  consider  me  a 
believer  in  some  such  control,  and  you  may 
consider  that  I  have  uttered  tliQse.  talks  in 
order  to  promote  intelligent  control.  At  the 
same  time  I  freely  admit  that  I  am  not  wise 
enough  to  plan  any  system  of  state  regulation 
of  industry,  nor  to  foresee  what  form  such  a 
system  will  take  if  it  is  wisely  adopted.  To 
repeat  once  more  what  I  have  already  said, 
I  am  no  theorist,  have  worked  out  no  system, 
and  make  no  pretension  to  doing  anything 
more  than  apply  the  common-sense  of  a  com- 
mon man  to  the  study  of  the  subject. 

Secondly,  as  things  just  now  look,  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  interests  of  the  public,  and 
therefore  of  laborers,  who  make  up  the  greater 
part  of  the  public,  are  in  greater  danger  from 
labor  organizations  than  they  are  from  cap- 
italists. Whatever  may  be  the  faults  of  the 
latter,  their  influence  is  essentially  conserva- 
tive. It  will  always  be  directed  towards 
keeping  the  mills,  machinery,  and  railroads  on 
which  we  all  depend  in  good  working  order. 


ON  THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  109 

That  these  appliances  should  be  kept  in  good 
working  order  is  as  important  to  us  as  that  a 
ship  in  which  we  are  crossing  the  ocean  should 
be  kept  properly  trimmed. 

Thirdly,  I  think  that  whatever  restrictions 
may  be  placed  upon  great  corporations  will 
come  by  judicial  decisions,  following  each 
other  so  slowly,  and  each  looking  so  small  in 
itself,  that  the  public  will  hardly  notice  them. 
I  doubt  whether  we  shall  get  much  effective 
legislation  either  from  Congress  or  the  states ; 
but  on  this  point  I  am  not  at  all  dogmatic.  I 
am  willing  to  let  the  future  keep  its  secrets. 


PART  III. 

THE  LABOEER  AND  HIS  WAGES 


XII. 

VISION  OF  A  PURITAN  DEACON. 

How  interesting  and  instructive  it  would 
be  if  we  could  get  some  Witch  of  Endor  to 
raise  from  the  dead  the  spirit  of  one  of  our 
ancestors,  that  we  might  show  him  our  mod- 
ern life  and  see  what  view  he  would  take  of 
it.  I  am  sure  if  the  reader  could  bring  be- 
fore him  a  New  England  deacon  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago,  to  show  him  our  houses, 
and  hear  his  comments,  he  would  feel  himself 
a  wiser  man.  Unfortunately,  witches  of  all 
kinds  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  earth 
more  than  a  century  ago,  so  that  we  cannot 
call  them  to  our  aid.  But  I  find  there  is  an- 
other method  of  getting  at  the  deacon's 
thoughts,  which  we  shall  have  no  difficulty  in 
putting  into  operation.  All  who  have  read 
"Paradise  Lost,"  know  that  the  Archangel 
Michael  once  paid  a  visit  to  Adam  in  Para- 
dise. By  purging  Adam's  eyes  with  certain 
rare  plants,  which  have  remained  in  existence 


114 

to  this  day,  the  archangel  was  enabled  to 
show  him  events  many  centuries  in  advance 
of  their  occurrence.  In  accordance  with  this 
ancient  precedent,  I  propose  to  bring  Michael 
down  to  the  house  of  Deacon  Samuel  Gush- 
ing, a  well-to-do  farmer,  a  God-fearing  citizen, 
and  a  pillar  of  the  Church,  who  resided  in 
Cambridge,  New  England,  in  the  year  1727. 
The  object  of  the  visit  is  to  show  the  deacon 
the  interior  of  a  skilled  laborer's  dwelling,  as 
we  find  it  in  this  generation,  and  to  listen  to 
his  remarks  as  the  wonders  of  modern  life  are 
unfolded  to  him.  So  he  is  taken  up  into  the 
world  of  visions,  carried  a  century  and  a  half 
into  the  future,  and  wafted  into  a  little  house, 
such  as  we  now  see  in  all  our  cities. 

The  vision  of  the  cosey  little  parlor  strikes 
him  with  wonder.  The  paper  on  the  walls, 
exceeding  in  richness  of  coloring  everything 
he  had  before  seen ;  the  pictures,  the  softly 
cushioned  chairs,  the  finely  painted  woods, 
the  family  photographs  on  the  mantel,  the 
clock  ticking  in  their  midst,  the  gaudy  chan- 
deliers, the  melodeon  in  the  corner,  with  its 
polished  case  and  ivory  keys,  are  all  objects 
of  splendor,  such  as  he  had  never  before 
seen.  The  extravagance  of  the  window  cur- 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  115 

tains,  which  seem  to  him  of  the  finest  and 
costliest  lace,  might  well  call  down  his  con- 
demnation. Looking  into  the  next  room,  he 
sees  a  lady  dressed  like  the  governor's  wife, 
wearing  an  apron  of  the  finest  muslin,  making 
tea  with  an  apparatus  wholly  new  to  his  eye. 
The  snow-white  sugar,  the  China  cups,  the 
costly  table-cloth,  the  wonderful  white  bread, 
all  excite  his  curiosity.  Yet  more  incredible 
are  the  objects  in  the  bedroom.  Such  a  pile 
of  pure  white  linen  apparel,  such  gaudy  bed- 
quilts,  such  finely  made  shirts,  are  quite  new 
to  his  eye.  But  before  he  gets  through  his 
examination  a  sound  is  heard  in  the  direction 
of  the  parlor.  He  returns  to  it  and  sees  two 
beings  enter,  whom  he,  at  the  first  glance, 
takes  for  fairies.  They  are  two  little  children 
dressed  in  a  profusion  of  needle-worked  mus- 
lin garments  of  so  singular  a  shape  that  he 
cannot  tell  whether  they  are  girls  or  boys. 
His  first  impulse  is  to  condemn  such  extrava- 
gance. "  Is  it  possible,"  he  says,  "  that  the 
rich  men  of  our  posterity  will  be  allowed  to 
make  such  a  display  of  their  extravagance  ?" 

Michael  (who  has  forgotten  how  to  talk 
poetry,  and  knows  only  plain  English  prose) : 
"Who  do  you  think  lives  in  these  rooms?" 


116  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

Deacon.  "  I  suppose  some  governor ;  or, 
more  likely  yet,  it  is  some  wealthy  nobleman, 
who  will  come  over  here  from  England  to 
corrupt  our  people  by  his  ostentation  and  ex- 
travagance." 

Michael.  "  Not  at  all,  my  good  fellow.  The 
man  who  lives  in  this  house  is  a  bricklayer." 

Deacon.  "  A  bricklayer !" 

Michael.  "  Yes ;  he  is  just  coming  in.  See 
him." 

Surely  enough,  a  bricklayer  appears,  carry- 
ing his  kit  and  dinner-pail,  and  walks  into 
the  parlor  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  owns  it. 
He  goes  up  to  the  bedroom,  washes  the  mor- 
tar off  his  plebeian  hands  in  a  splendid  earth- 
en basin,  puts  on  one  of  the  fine  linen  shirts, 
and  soon  goes  down  again,  dressed  as  finely  as 
the  governor.  He  takes  his  seat  at  the  table 
and  commences  his  meal.  The  lady  pours 
out  his  tea,  into  which  he  puts  a  profusion  of 
the  priceless  white  sugar. 

Deacon.  "  A  bricklayer  at  home  in  such  a 
little  palace,  sitting  on  such  finely  cushioned 
chairs,  and  eating  such  food  off  such  a  table. 
How  can  it  be  ?  And  what  quantities  of  but- 
ter he  is  putting  on  his  bread  !  A  bricklayer 
eating  butter  with  white  bread,  wearing  shoes 


ON   THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  117 

all  summer,  and  putting  on  fine  shirts !  How 
can  it  be?  Do  tell  me  what  a  bricklayer  is 
doing  in  such  a  house,  and  who  is  that  fine 
lady  waiting  on  him  ?" 

Michael.  "  That  fine  lady  is  his  wife,  at- 
tending to  her  every-day  duties." 

Deacon.  "Where  are  her  spinning-wheel 
and  loom  ?" 

Michael.  "They  have  neither  spinning- 
wheel  nor  loom  in  the  house." 

Deacon.  "  And  those  extravagant  little  be- 
ings ;  I  thought  they  were  fairies  ?" 

Michael.  "  They  are  his  children,  two  little 
girls  who  have  just  come  in  from  hearing  mu- 
sic in  the  public  park." 

Deacon.  "But  how  can  a  bricklayer  ever 
have  such  wealth,  such  a  house,  such  a  wife, 
and  such  children  ?" 

Michael.  "  There  is  nothing  uncommon 
about  it.  All  men  sober  and  industrious 
enough  to  learn  a  trade  will  be  able  to  have 
such  a  house,  such  a  wife,  and  such  children 
in  these  coming  days." 

Deacon.  "  But  how  can  all  this  be  brought 
about  ?  Why  there  is  a  year's  work  in  the 
curtains  to  that  man's  window,  and  another 
year's  work,  I  should  think,  in  making  these 


JL18  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

dresses  of  his  wife  and  children,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  all  the  pictures,  ornaments,  and  furni- 
ture in  his  house ;  and  yet  you  say  they  have 
no  spinning-wheel  and  no  loom.  How  did 
they  make  such  clothes  ?" 

Michael.  "  It  would  be  a  long  story  to  tell 
you  in  detail ;  but  I  will  try  to  give  you 
some  idea  of  the  process.  All  the  cunningly 
wrought  things  you  have  seen  are  hardly 
made  by  hands  at  all,  but  by  ingenious  ma- 
chines, one  of  which  will  turn  out  in  an  hour 
more  work  than  a  man  can  do  in  a  year. 
These  machines  will  be  worked  by  engines 
more  powerful  than  a  thousand  horses.  They 
will  turn  out  such  quantities  of  goods  that 
their  owners  will  hardly  know  what  to  do 
with  them.  Then  great  leaders  will  rise  and 
show  men  how,  by  working  together  in  thou- 
sands, they  can  build  roads  and  lay  rails  from 
one  end  of  the  state  to  the  other,  and  from 
one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other.  Then 
they  will  invent  engines  which  will  carry  a 
hundred  wagon-loads  of  the  goods  you  have 
seen  across  whole  colonies  with  the  speed  of 
a  race-horse.  Thus  with  the  machine  mak- 
ing the  goods  and  the  engines  transporting 
them  to  every  part  of  the  country,  everybody 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  119 

will  be  able  to  buy  them.  As  an  example  of 
this,  look  at  the  bricklayer  once  more  and  see 
what  he  is  doing." 

Deacon.  "  He  is  eating  grapes ;  but  such 
luscious  grapes  I  never  dreamed  of.  Where 
did  they  come  from  ?" 

Michael.  "  They  came  from  the  coast  of 
the  Pacific  Ocean.  One  of  these  railroads 
will  extend  all  the  way  across  the  continent 
and  bring  fresh  grapes  from  the  Pacific 
Ocean  to  this  bricklayer's  home  in  Massachu- 
setts." 

Deacon.  "How  the  people  will  bless  these 
machines,  as  they  get  to  work.  Even  if  they 
will  be,  as  you  say,  inanimate  objects,  I  do 
not  see  how  they  can  help  crowning  them 
with  garlands  of  flowers." 

Michael.  "  Nothing  of  the  sort.  The  in- 
troduction of  the  machines  will  be  cursed  at 
every  step,  and  great  numbers  of  them  will 
be  destroyed  by  the  indignant  multitude." 

Deacon.  "  That  is  the  most  incomprehen- 
sible thing  you  have  yet  said.  How  can  it 
be?" 

Michael.  "  When  the  machines  go  into 
operation  they  make  goods  so  cheaply  that 
human  hands  cannot  compete  with  them,  and 


120  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

thus  laborers  will  find  their  work  taken  away 
from  them.  Thus  the  nail -makers  will  op- 
pose the  introduction  of  machinery  for  mak- 
ing nails,  the  cloth-maker  will  oppose  the  in- 
troduction of  machinery  for  making  cloth, 
and  so  on  through  the  whole  range  of  trades 
and  occupations." 

Deacon.  u  Then  how  will  the  machines  ever 
get  introduced  at  all?" 

Michael.  "Through  the  persistence  and  self- 
ishness of  the  men  who  make  and  own  them. 
They  will  force  their  machines  into  use  in 
spite  of  all  opposition,  and  make  money  by 
underselling  everybody  who  has  not  got  the 
machinery,  and  thus  the  machine  itself  will 
triumph  in  the  long  run." 

Deacon.  "But  these  great  leaders  of  men, 
who  show  them  how  to  make  a  railroad  from 
one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other ;  they, 
if  not  the  machines,  will  be  crowned  with  gar- 
lands of  flowers  and  received  like  heroes 
wherever  they  go." 

Michael.  "  There  again  you  are  mistaken ; 
they  will  be  looked  upon  as  the  most  selfish 
of  mortals,  and  people  will  taunt  them  with 
their  inability  to  take  their  railroads  with 
them  when  they  die." 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  121 

Deacon.  "  Is  all  gratitude,  then,  to  disap- 
pear from  the  breast  of  man  within  one  hun- 
dred arid  fifty  years?  What  possible  object 
could  these  men  have  had  in  showing  how 
the  railway  was  to  be  built,  if  they  got  noth- 
ing but  hard  words  in  return  ?" 

Michael.  "Their  motives  will  be  purely 
selfish,  as  men  suppose  selfishness  to  be. 
They  get  their  roads  built  in  order  that  they 
may  have  the  pleasure  of  owning  them,  and 
thus  of  being  very  rich  men." 

Deacon.  "  But  how  will  that  give  them 
pleasure?" 

Michael.  "I  cannot  explain  it,  except  by 
saying  that  such  will  be  the  propensity  of 
human  nature.  Men  will  go  to  great  labor 
in  building  roads,  canals,  and  machinery  of  no 
more  use  to  themselves  than  to  their  millions 
of  fellow-citizens  just  from  the  innate  impulse 
of  their  nature.  That  is  all  I  can  tell  you 
about  it." 

Deacon.  "  What  happy  beings  they  will  all 
be.  I  fear  they  will  no  longer  believe  in  tho 
fall  of  man  nor  in  total  depravity,  and  will 
indeed  be  so  well  satisfied  with  this  world  as 
never  to  want  another." 

Michael.  "On  the  contrary,  the  year  1887, 


122  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

which  I  am  now  showing  you,  will  be  an  era 
of  such  dissatisfaction  with  their  lot  on  the 
part  of  skilled  laborers  as  the  world  never  be- 
fore saw." 

Deacon.  "  Dissatisfaction !  At  first  sight 
I  should  hardly  believe  it  possible.  But  I 
suppose  it  must  always  be  true  that  wealth 
alone  cannot  make  a  man  perfectly  satisfied. 
After  he  has  got  all  his  wants  supplied  and  is 
rolling  in  luxury  he  still  finds  that  he  needs 
something  which  wealth  cannot  give.  Please 
tell  me,  then,  what  the  laborers  will  want  be- 
sides wealth." 

Michael.  "Dear  Deacon,  they  will  be  dis- 
satisfied because  they  think  they  do  not  get 
their  fair  share  of  riches.  Orators  and  pub- 
lic speakers  will  tell  them  that  the  whole 
effect  of  railroads  and  machinery  has  been  to 
make  the  rich  richer  and  the  poor  poorer; 
and  that  laborers  have  a  harder  time  to  get 
along  than  they  ever  had  before." 

Deacon.  "  Then  will  all  intelligence,  all 
knowledge  of  the  past,  disappear  from  among 
men  in  that  nineteenth  century?" 

Michael.  "  Not  in  their  own  opinion.  They 
will  boast  that  intelligence,  virtue,  and  truth 
never  reigned  as  they  will  then." 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  133 

Deacon.  "  But  you  surely  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  any  one  can  persuade  that  bricklayer, 
who  has  just  finished  such  a  supper  as  no 
governor  of  Massachusetts  ever  ate,  that  he  is 
a  suffering  and  abused  man." 

Michael.  "  I  do  say  that  very  thing.  More- 
over, there  is  a  side  of  the  case  which  we  have 
not  yet  seen.  Neither  the  fine  clothes  of  his 
wife  and  children,  nor  the  delicious  food  which 
he  eats,  nor  the  ornaments  which  decorate  his 
house,  take  all  his  wages  to  buy.  He  still  has 
some  surplus  income  which  he  puts  into  the 
fund  of  a  great  organization  of  men  like  him- 
self, extending  over  the  whole  country,  and 
called  Knights  of  Labor." 

Deacon.  "  I  hope  the  money  is  wisely  ex- 
pended. But  what  you  have  said  about  the 
machines  and  other  matters  makes  me  fearful 
on  the  subject." 

Michael.  "I  will  let  you  judge  for  your- 
self. You  see  that  great  news-letter  which 
the  man  has  before  him;  can  you  see  what  he 
is  reading  ?" 

Deacon.  "No;  nothing  but  the  heading. 
I  see  in  big  letters  the  words  c  The  Great 
Boycott,'  but  I  do  not  know  what  that 


124  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

Michael.  "  I  will  tell  you.  You  have  seen 
the  luscious  grapes  which  the  man  was  eating, 
and  which  I  told  you  came  from  the  Pacific 
coast.  Well,  the  way  he  happened  to  have 
those  grapes  was  that  a  great  number  of  Chi- 
nese sailed  all  the  way  over  the  Pacific  Ocean 
to  California,  and  went  to  work  for  very  low 
wages  in  various  occupations,  among  them 
that  of  raising  grapes,  some  of  which  were 
brought  over  to  Massachusetts  by  the  railway. 
ISTow  these  Knights  of  Labor,  to  which  this 
bricklayer  belongs,  get  very  angry  with  these 
Chinese  because  they  cultivate  the  grapes  so 
cheaply;  and  last  week  they  all  put  their 
heads  together  and  decreed  that  no  products 
of  Chinese  labor  should  come  from  California 
to  Massachusetts.  So  the  order  was  issued  last 
week  that  not  a  man  should  run  a  train  with 
California  grapes  on  it ;  and  the  latter  are  rot- 
ting on  the  road  between  Massachusetts  and 
California.  "While  they  are  rotting  the  men 
who  would  have  been  transporting  them  are 
out  of  employment,  and  this  man  is  paying 
money  to  support  them  while  they  stand  idle 
and  let  the  grapes  rot.'3 

Deacon.  "  You  are  reversing  human  nature 
in  a  way  that  is  perfectly  incomprehensible. 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  125 

You  say  this  bricklayer  is  angry  with  tho 
Chinese  for  raising  him  such  luscious  grapes 
for  almost  nothing;  and  yet  while  he  is  pay- 
ing money  out  of  one  pocket  to  get  them,  he 
is  paying  money  out  of  the  other  pocket  to 
keep  them  from  coming  ?  What  does  it 
mean  ?" 

Michael.  "  I  can  only  tell  you  that  such  will 
be  the  plan  on  which  a  large  part  of  the  ac- 
tivity of  labor  organizations  will  be  directed 
in  the  future.  For  example,  the  only  time 
that  the  family  of  this  bricklayer  whom  we 
are  now  visiting  really  suffered  for  the  neces- 
saries of  life  was  last  winter.  The  suffering 
happened  in  this  way  :  The  miners  in  the  in- 
terior of  Pennsylvania  and  along  the  Alle- 
ghany  Mountains,  where  most  all  the  coal  for 
future  use  is  to  come  from,  had  a  quarrel  with 
their  employers  about  their  wages,  and  refused 
to  work.  Many  thousand  members  of  other 
labor  organizations,  among  them  this  very 
bricklayer,  paid  every  shilling  they  could  spare 
from  their  wages  to  support  the  miners,  and 
enable  them  to  hold  out  against  their  employ- 
ers. The  consequence  was  that  coal  enough 
was  not  mined  to  supply  the  whole  popula- 
tion, and  the  price  was  so  high  that  this  brick- 


J.26  A   PLAIN   MAN  8   TALK 

layer  could  not  buy  enough  to  keep  his  chil- 
dren warm.  Just  as  he  pays  money  out  of 
one  pocket  to  buy  grapes,  and  out  of  the  oth- 
er pocket  to  keep  them  from  coining,  so  he 
contributed  money  out  of  one  pocket  to  keep 
miners  from  digging  coal,  and,  in  consequence, 
did  not  have  money  enough  in  the  other  pock- 
et to  buy  coal  with." 

,-  Deacon.  "  But,  surely,  intelligent,  God-fear- 
ing men  will  rise  to  point  out  to  these  deluded 
Knights  the  folly  of  their  action  and  the  falla- 
cies of  their  arguments?" 

n,  Michael.  "Perhaps  so.  But  many  other 
learned  men  will  rise  and  tell  the  Knights  that 
they  have  studied  all  history ;  that  the  labor- 
,;ers  are  very  much  abused  men,  and  are  just 
learning  a  little  about  their  rights ;  and  will 
do  all  they  can  to  make  them  discontented 
with  their  lot,  and  encourage  them  in  all  the 
foolish  devices  by  which  they  are  working 
their  own  hurt." 

Deacon.  "  If  common-sense  is  to  disappear 
from  mankind  in  this  way,  what  is  to  become 
of  them?  Cannot  you  let  me  see  another 
hundred  years  ahead  ?" 

But  our  time  is  now  up,  and  we  are  not  al- 
lowed to  listen  further  to  the  conversation. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  127 


XIII. 

THE  ACCOUNT  CURRENT. 

EVEEY  man  of  business  must  keep  an  ac- 
count of  his  receipts  and  expenditures  in  or- 
der to  learn  whether  he  is  gaining  or  losing  by 
the  various  enterprises,  in  which  he  engages. 
When,  tracing  out  the  effect  of  any  policy,  he 
finds  a  greater  outgo  than  income,  he  knows 
that  lie  is  losing ;  and  in  the  opposite  case  he 
knows  that  he  is  making  a  profit.  This  is 
what  every  one  of  us  should  do  when  possi- 
ble, in  order  to  learn  whether  we  gain  or  lose 
by  our  enterprises.  Hence  I  propose  that  the 
laboring  classes  at  large  shall  keep  an  account 
current  of  their  gains  and  losses  by  the  labor 
movement,  because  in  that  way,  and  in  no 
other,  can  they  learn  how  they  stand.  They 
want  to  gain  benefits  which  will  counterbal- 
ance all  their  expenditures,  and  it  is  only  by 
putting  down  the  losses  and  gains  that  they 
can  decide  whether  they  are  succeeding. 


128 

I  atn  now  going  to  present  one  side  of  such 
an  account  current  to  the  best  of  my  ability. 
I  do  not  pretend  that  it  is  a  perfect  account, 
and  therefore  I  desire  the  reader  to  correct  it 
wherever  he  finds  it  wrong.  The  principal 
items  of  debit  have  been  given  in  the  preced- 
ing chapters,  though  not  always  stated  fully 
in  amounts.  When  they  are  all  collected  the 
account  may  be  made  out  in  the  form  which 
I  am  now  going  to  give. 

I  must  also  disclaim  any  special  knowledge 
of  the  exact  amounts  which  should  be  charged. 
Of  course,  such  evils  as  we  have  shown  to  flow 
from  certain  phases  of  the  labor  movement  do 
not  admit  of  exact  measurement  in  dollars, 
and  therefore  the  amount  of  the  damage  will 
be  differently  estimated  by  different  men.  If 
the  reader  thinks  I  have  either  underestimated 
or  overestimated  the  money  values,  he  is  at 
perfect  liberty  to  correct  them.  All  I  ask  is, 
that  he  will  carefully  weigh  the  matter,  put 
down  the  items  just  as  he  thinks  they  ought 
to  stand,  and  draw  his  own  conclusions. 


ON  THE  LABOR  QUESTION.  129 

THE    LABOR    MOVEMENT   IN  ACCOUNT  WITH    THE 
LABORING   MAN. 

Dr. 

To  amounts  contributed  to  support  strikers 
upon  the  Missouri  Pacific  road,  and  to  stop 
the  trains  on  that  road  from  bringing  coal, 
leather,  beef,  and  many  other  necessaries  of 
life  to  the  laboring  men  in  Eastern  cities' $50,000 

To  higher  prices  which  the  laborers  of  St.  Louis 
had  to  pay  for  coal  in  consequence  of  the 
above  stoppage 40,000 

Damages  suffered  by  twenty  thousand  laborers 
who  could  no  longer  send  their  children  to 
school  in  consequence  of  the  loss  of  employ- 
ment through  the  strike ;  damages  assessed  at 
three  dollars  for  each  family  thus  suffering. .  60,000 

To  ten  millions  of  laborers  having  to  pay  on  the 
average  one  cent  more  for  a  pair  of  shoes  in 
consequence  of  the  same  strike 100,000 

Assessments  to  support  strike  of  coal-miners  in 
Pennsylvania Unknown 

Increased  price  which  laborers  had  to  pay  for 
coal  in  consequence  of  said  strike,  amounting 
to  twenty  cents  each  for  five  hundred  thou- 
sand families 100,000 

Contributions  to  support  strikers  on  the  Third 
Avenue  Railroad  in  New  York  city 20,000 

Loss  of  time  suffered  by  twenty  thousand  labor- 
ers who  wanted  to  ride  on  that  road  and  could 
not;  assessed  at  fifty  cents  each 10,000 

Wear  and  tear  of  shoe  leather  suffered  by  these 
same  people  because  they  had  to  walk,  at  ten 
cents  each 2000 

Privation  and  suffering  undergone  by  three 
thousand  employees  deprived  of  employment 
by  the  said  strike  at  $50  each 150,000 

Etc.,ttc.,  etc. 
9 


130 

I  see  that,  in  making  out  this  account,  I 
have  undertaken  a  task  which  is  far  beyond 
my  powers.  I  cannot  possibly  enumerate  the 
thousands  of  cases  in  which  large  bodies  of 
working  people  have  been  ordered  away  from 
their  employment,  or  found  their  establish- 
ments boycotted  since  the  beginning  of  1886. 
These  strikes  have  every  one  caused  priva- 
tion and  suffering  to  scores,  hundreds,  or  thou- 
sands of  people.  They  have  also  caused  indi- 
rect loss  to  all  laborers  in  the  country  through 
their  having  to  pay  higher  prices  for  the  nec- 
essaries of  life.  They  have  also  done  injury 
to  the  rising  generation  of  little  children  of 
laborers,  whose  parents  could  no  longer  give 
them  the  necessary  quantity  of  wholesome 
food  and  send  them  to  school  to  be  educated. 
They  have  deprived  thousands  of  poor  seam- 
stresses of  regular  employment  because  those 
who  employ  them  fear  to  do  so,  owing  to  the 
derangement  of  business  caused  by  the  labor 
movement. 

'Nor  is  the  end  yet  reached.  Next  winter 
the  distress  thus  caused  will  be  yet  more  se- 
verely felt;  and  it  may  be  that  the  poorer 
classes  in  our  cities  will  suffer  from  want  of 
employment,  and  hence  of  food  and  fire  as  they 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  131 

have  never  before  suffered  in  our  time.  All 
who  have  carefully  studied  the  preceding  talks 
will  see  that  it  is  impossible  for  business  to  be 
deranged  as  it  has  been  without  every  laborer 
in  the  land  suffering.  And  why  all  this  ?  Be- 
cause a  large  body  of  laborers  in  regular  em- 
ployment, railway  employees,  operatives  in  fac- 
tories, drivers  and  conductors  of  street  cars, 
and  men  engaged  in  nearly  every  branch  of 
industry,  with  astonishing  unwisdom,  gave  up 
their  personal  liberty,  and  pledged  themselves 
to  abandon  their  employment  and  see  their 
families  suffer  whenever  their  irresponsible 
leaders  chose  to  give  the  order.  I  can  scarce- 
ly recall  anything  in  human  history  so  unwiso 
as  this.  We  read  of  men  having  inflicted 
great  damage  upon  their  neighbors  and  upon 
their  enemies;  but  I  hardly  know  where  we 
should  look  for  an  instance  in  which  men  have 
thus  made  war  upon  themselves  and  upon 
their  own  means  of  living,  by  joining  to- 
gether in  a  movement  to  stop  each  other  from 
manufacturing  the  necessaries  of  life  and  from 
earning  the  wages  necessary  to  the  support  of 
their  families.  That  any  movement  conceived 
in  such  folly  can  lead  to  good  is  contrary  to 
reason  and  sound  sense. 


132  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

But,  before  winding  up  the  account,  we 
should  ascertain  what  is  to  be  put  down  on 
the  credit  side.  I  confess  I  find  it  difficult  to 
do  this,  because  I  cannot  think  of  anything 
belonging  on  the  credit  side  which  it  would 
not  seem  almost  ridiculous  to  put  down.  The 
laborers  have  had  several  pages  of  good  ad- 
vice from  Mr.  Powderly,  which  they  may  es- 
timate at  one  hundred  dollars  per  word.  They 
have  had  the  pleasure  of  being  patted  on  the 
back  by  scheming  politicians  desirous  of  buy- 
ing their  votes  by  pandering  to  their  folly.  I 
would  like  to  know  just  at  what  price  they 
value  this  gratification.  Certain  of  their 
leaders  have  had  the  satisfaction  of  showing 
their  power  by  ordering  thousands  of  men  to 
quit  their  employment  at  a  moment's  notice, 
without  reason.  That  any  general  good  has 
been  done  I  am  quite  unable  to  conceive. 

I  fancy  I  hear  a  Knight  of  Labor  replying 
to  this :  You  mistake  the  object  of  our  order, 
if  you  suppose  it  to  be  the  encouragement  of 
strikes  and  boycotts.  The  fact  is  the  con- 
trary. One  of  our  great  objects  is  to  do  away 
with  the  necessity  for  either  strikes  or  boy- 
cotts ;  and  you  should  give  us  credit  for  what 
ever  good  we  may  thus  attain. 


< 

•' 

ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  133 

I  am  going  to  consider  the  platform  and 
work  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  in  the  next  two 
talks.  At  present  I  remind  you  that  the  fore- 
going current  account  is  made  out  in  the  name 
of  labor  organizations  in  general,  and  not  in 
that  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  in  particular. 
At  the  same  time  I  have  a  word  to  say  in  re- 
ply to  the  foregoing  remark.  Not  long  since 
I  read  an  article  by  a  supporter  of  the  labor 
movement,  in  which  he  complains  that  people 
talked  about  and  condemned  this  movement, 
when  they  really  knew  nothing  about  the  ob- 
jects of  the  movement,  and  had  never  read  the 
platform  of  the  Knights  of  Labor. 

j  In  reply  to  all  this  I  make  a  statement  whicl 
may  sound  almost  paradoxical — to  wit,  that  i 
is  not  at  all  necessary,  in  discussing  this  sub 
ject,  to  inquire  what  the  objects  of  the  labor 
movement  are.  So  far  as  I  have  seen,  the  ob 
jects  of  all  socialistic  movements  are  most  ex 
cellent,  and  I  freely  admit  that  the  same  is 
true  of  your  objects.  But  it  is  not  the  object3 
which  we  are  concerned  with,  but  practica 
results.  If  any  movement  is  productive  o1 
bad  results,  we  should  condemn  it,  no  matter 
how  pure  and  philanthropic  the  motives  of  its 
promoters  may  be. 


134  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

Tour  order,  and  perhaps  other  labor  organi- 
zations, want  to  make  radical  changes  in  the 
constitution  of  society.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
your  efforts  have  done  and  arc  doing  untold 
harm  and  very  little  good.  The  activity  and 
power  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  have  so  far 
been  directed  towards  the  promotion  and  not 
towards  the  suppression  of  strikes,  and  it  was 
their  assemblies  which  introduced  the  boycott 
into  this  country.  You  know  that  all  the  dis- 
turbances which  now  threaten  the  industries 
of  the  country,  and  which  are  going  to  be 
productive  of  such  unheard-of  distress  among 
all  laboring  classes  next  winter,  have  been,  to 
a  great  extent,  engineered  and  carried  through 
by  assemblies  and  leaders  of  the  Knights  of 
Labor.  This  plain  fact  is  an  answer  to  every 
objection  that  can  be  made. 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  135 


XIY. 

A  TALK  TO  A  KNIGHT  OF  LABOR 

TALKING  to  a  Knight  of  Labor,  I  would  say : 
A  great  many  men  are  now  talking  to  you,  at 
you,  and  about  you.  These  talkers  consider 
you  from  two  quite  distinct  points  of  view. 
One  class  look  upon  you  as  little  children  in 
wisdom,  whose  favor  is  to  be  gained,  not  by 
telling  you  what  is  true,  but  by  telling  you 
what  they  think  it  is  most  agreeable  to  you  to 
hear.  They  pat  you  on  the  back,  tell  you 
what  smart  little  boys  you  are,  and  offer  you 
candy  in  order  that  you  may  think  well  of 
them  and  vote  for  them.  They  say  it  is  of 
no  use  to  reason  with  you,  or  do  anything  but 
humor  and  cajole  you.  The  other  class  look 
upon  you  as  mature  men  of  sense,  animated  by 
motives  as  high  as  those  which  move  men  in 
general,  ready  to  do  what  is  for  the  greatest 
good  to  the  greatest  number;  but  not  so  thor- 
oughly trained  in  history,  technology,  finance, 
and  other  branches  of  knowledge  that  you  have 


130  A  PLAIN   MAN  S   TALK 

all  the  facts  which  ought  to  guide  you  at  your 
finger  ends.  If  you  have  read  my  preceding 
chapters  you  will  see  that  I  belong  to  this  sec- 
ond class ;  and  you  will  bear  me  witness  that 
I  never  offered  you  a  single  stick  of  candy  to 
vote  for  me.  I  now  want  to  talk  to  you  very 
plainly  about  your  platform,  your  work,  and 
your  objects. 

Your  platform  begins  by  claiming  that 
"  the  alarming  development  and  aggressiveness 
of  great  capitalists  and  corporations,  unless 
checked,  will  inevitably  lead  to  the  pauperiza- 
tion and  hopeless  degradation  of  the  toiling 
masses,57  and  then  adds:  "It  is  imperative,  if 
we  desire  to  enjoy  the  full  blessings  of  life, 
that  a  check  be  placed  upon  unjust  accumula- 
lation  and  the  power  for  evil  of  aggregated 
wealth."  You  yourselves  are  supposed  to 
belong  to  these  "  toiling  masses  "  whom  pau- 
perization and  hopeless  degradation  are  star- 
ing in  the  face.  Now  I  submit  that  to  talk  of 
men  who  contribute  as  much  time  and  money 
as  you  do  to  printing,  publishing,  holding 
meetings,  and  supporting  public  speakers, 
strikers,  and  unemployed  members,  being  pau- 
perized and  degraded,  is  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  It  is  like  a  body  of  sturdy  men  walk- 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  187 

ing  through  the  streets  and  crying  aloud : 
"  We  are  sick  and  prisoners,  and  so  weak  from 
starvation  that  we  can  scarcely  speak  or  move." 
Men  who  are  really  pauperized  and  degraded 
cannot  combine  as  you  have  done,  and  cannot 
raise  the  moneys  which  your  order  commands. 
You  will  see  the  contrast  in  its  strongest  light 
by  inquiring  how  it  comes  that  you  are  so  suc- 
cessful in  your  efforts. 

Two  or  three  hundred  years  ago  the  forma- 
tion of  any  such  organization  as  yours  would 
have  been  utterly  out  of  the  question  ;  and 
that  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  the 
laws  did  not  recognize  the  equal  right  of  men 
of  all  classes  to  combine  together  for  promoting 
their  objects.  Had  it  then  been  attempted  to 
form  an  order  of  the  Knights  of  Labor  for  the 
purpose  of  doing  what  you  have  done  in  this 
country,  the  leaders  would  have  been  brought 
into  court  and  punished  by  fine  or  imprison- 
ment. It  is  because  our  ideas  of  human  rights 
and  human  liberties  have  advanced,  and  have 
found  expression  in  our  laws  and  political 
institutions,  that  you  are  now  allowed  to  be- 
come Knights  of  Labor  at  all. 

In  the  next  place,  the  formation  of  such  an 
order  in  former  times  was  impossible  because 


138  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

laboring  men  could  not  possibly  spare  the 
time,  money,  or  thought  to  engage  in  such 
business.  In  order  to  make  a  bare  living  they 
had  to  work  from  twelve  to  sixteen  hours  a 
day.  Not  only  grown  people  had  to  work,  but 
as  soon  as  a  child  acquired  the  muscular  ability 
to  perform  any  regular  labor  it  had  to  help 
earn  a  living,  instead  of  going  to  school  as  your 
children  do.  The  result  of  this  was  that  peo- 
ple had  neither  the  time  nor  the  ability  to  edu- 
cate themselves  into  our  modern  ideas.  After 
working  twelve  or  sixteen  hours  children  were 
too  tired  to  learn,  and  grown  people  were  too 
tired  to  think.  Every  hour  which  a  laborer 
gave  to  the  formation  or  management  of  a 
great  organization  would  have  been  so  much 
out  of  his  means  of  living. 

This  is  no  longer  the  case.  Evidently  when 
laborers  can  make  a  living  with  from  eight  to 
twelve  hours'  work,  can  spare  the  time,  the 
money,  and  the  thought  to  engage  in  organiz- 
ing, and  can  let  their  children  go  to  the  public 
schools,  there  has  been  a  very  great  change  in 
their  condition.  Now  let  me  ask  you  why 
this  change.  I  want  you  to  ask  it  yourself 
and  to  ask  all  your  fellow-knights,  and  not  to 
be  satisfied  until  you  get  an  answer  which  is 
perfectly  satisfactory  to  you. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  139 

I  will  tell  you  my  answer.  It  has  all  been 
done  by  capital,  capitalists,  and  corporations. 
You  are  now  able  to  make  a  living  with  such 
comparative  ease  through  the  introduction 
of  machinery,  and  the  building  of  railroads 
to  make  and  bring  within  reach  of  you  the 
necessaries  of  life.  In  modern  society  capital 
means  railroads,  steamboats,  and  machinery. 
And  capitalists  mean  the  men  who  know  how 
to  build  railroads  and  steamboats  and  run  ma- 
chinery, and  who  are  willing  to  apply  their 
wealth-producing  powers  to  such  enterprises. 
To  say  that  such  men  and  such  things  lead  to 
your  pauperization  is  like  saying  that  the 
bread  you  eat  leads  to  starvation,  and  that  the 
house  you  are  in  is  the  cause  of  your  exposure 
to  the  weather.  It  is  as  near  to  a  contradic- 
tion in  terms  as  anything  well  can  be. 

You  probably  know  that  the  great  question 
which  has  divided  men  during  the  last  two 
hundred  years  is  whether  you,  the  laboring 
masses,  can  safely  be  trusted  to  guide  your 
own  destinies.  The  old  conservative  party 
thinks  you  cannot.  It  says  that  the  manage- 
ment of  public  affairs  requires  the  highest 
wisdom,  and  as  you  do  not  possess  this  wis- 
dom you  should  not  be  allowed  to  exercise 


140  A   PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK. 

power.  The  other  side  claims  that  though 
great  wisdom  is  required  in  public  affairs,  it 
is  not  necessary  to  the  exercise  of  power,  be- 
cause men  who  are  not  wise  themselves  may 
choose  wiser  men  to  act  for  them. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  present  is  the 
most  critical  time  the  world  has  ever  seen 
for  these  two  theories  to  be  tried.  There  is 
nothing  in  history  to  correspond  to  the  im- 
provement in  the  laboring  man's  condition  ;  I 
mean  the  condition  of  that  class  of  laborers 
who  join  the  Knights,  during  the  last  twenty 
years.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  tho 
world  millions  of  toiling  laborers  have  been 
able  to  collect  hundreds  of  thousands — I  sup- 
pose, indeed,  millions — of  dollars,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  effect  to  their  views  of  society 
and  government.  Thus  the  conservative  and 
progressive  parties  have  before  them  the  very 
men  whom  they  have  been  disputing  about, 
just  getting  ready  to  act,  and  the  whole  ques- 
tion is  whether  they  will  use  their  newly  ac- 
quired power  wisely  or  foolishly.  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that  if  you  use  it  as  indi- 
cated in  your  platform,  and  as  it  has  already 
been  used,  you  will  USQ  it  foolishly  and  in  a 
way  that  will  ultimately  lead  to  its  loss  and  to 


ON   THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  141 

your  own  degradation.  Let  us  see  if  this  is 
not  true. 

In  the  first  place,  if  you  read  the  preced- 
ing chapters  carefully,  and  study  out  the  con- 
ditions on  which  your  welfare  depends,  you 
will  see  as  plain  as  day  that  you  have  been  en- 
gaged in  attacking  the  very  instrumentalities 
which  have  given  you  the  power  you  now 
wield.  It  is  capital,  as  embodied  in  railways 
arid  machinery,  which  has  given  you  all  these 
benefits,  with  the  power  they  bring,  and  capi- 
tal is  one  of  the  main  objects  which  you  at- 
tack. Perhaps  you  may  say  that  it  is  not  the 
capital  itself,  but  the  owners  of  it,  which  you 
attack.  But  if  you  will  read  carefully  what 
I  have  said  you  will  see  that  the  owners  are 
nothing  more  than  the  managers  of  the  capital, 
and  that,  if  you  do  not  allow  them  the  privilege 
of  managing  the  capital  they  have  acquired, 
the  capital  itself  will  disappear  with  them. 

But  this  is  not  the  only  foolish  thing  you 
are  doing.  You  are  rejecting  something  which 
more  than  anything  else  makes  life  worth  liv- 
ing, and  which  has  cost  your  forefathers  more 
toil  and  bloodshed  than  anything  else  in  the 
world — namely,  individual  liberty.  The  other 
day  a  mechanic  was  asked  why  he  engaged  in 


142  A  PLAIN  MAN  6   TALK 

the  strike  when  he  was  perfectly  satisfied  with 
his  employer  and  when  the  strike  would  proba- 
bly subject  his  wife  and  children  to  distress. 
He  replied  that  he  was  ordered  to  do  so,  and 
must  obey  at  whatever  cost.  If  asked  to  justify 
his  course,  he  would  probably  have  said  that 
he  had  voluntarily  given  up  his  own  individual 
rights  for  what  he  supposed  to  be  the  benefit 
of  his  class. 

Now  what  I  wish  to  impress  upon  you  is 
this — that  the  position  of  a  man  who  thus  gives 
up  his  individual  liberty  is  worse  than  the 
position  of  the  meanest  subject  of  the  greatest 
tyrant  of  modern  times.  When  a  man  receives 
the  order,  "  Do  not  go  to  work  to-day,"  it  is 
the  same  to  him  whether  it  comes  from  a  czar, 
a  satrap,  or  a  master  workman.  Our  laws  do 
not  even  recognize  the  right  of  a  man  to  sell 
himself  in  slavery,  and,  except  as  a  matter  of 
sentiment  and  feeling,  this  giving  up  of  lib- 
erty is  not  a  whit  better  than  an  involuntary 
slavery. 

You  not  only  surrender  your  own  natural 
rights,  but  you  encroach  upon  the  rights  of  such 
of  your  fellow-laborers  a£  will  not  or  cannot 
join  your  ranks  in  the  most  cruel  manner.  If 
there  is  any  one  natural  right  of  humanity 


ON  THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  M3 

which  the  most  heartless  tyrant  never  dared 
to  deny  it  is  that  of  every  man  to  make  an 
honest  living  in  his  own  way,  by  any  reputable 
pursuit  he  chooses  to  follow.  But  one  great 
object  of  labor  organization  is  to  prevent  any 
skilled  laborer  from  making  a  living  unless  he 
will  join  a  labor  union.  The  man  may  not  be 
able  to  earn  union  wages ;  he  may  have  such 
a  sense  of  his  rights  that  he  will  not  become 
the  subject  of  a  tyranny ;  he  may  not  be  will- 
ing to  contribute  money  for  the  support  of 
strikers;  he  may  have  a  family  of  helpless 
children  dependent  on  him  for  support.  In 
every  case  your  members  are  required  to  re- 
fuse to  work  with  him,  and  to  do  all  in  their 
power  not  only  to  secure  his  pauperization  and 
degradation,  but  the  starvation  of  himself  and 
his  race.  Never  was  a  tyrant,  never  was  a 
public  enemy,  seldom,  was  an  invading  army, 
engaged  in  greater  cruelty  than  this. 


144  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 


XV. 

ANOTHER  TALK  TO  A  KNIGHT  OF  LABOR. 

I  ESTEEM  it  the  duty  of  a  good  citizen  to 
promote  every  movement  that  is  good,  and  to 
oppose  every  movement  that  is  bad  in  its  ef- 
fects. Most  great  movements  like  that  which 
you  are  now  inaugurating  have  a  good  object, 
but,  as  I  have  already  said,  it  does  not  follow 
that,  because  the  object  is  good,  therefore  the 
effect  will  be  good.  The  efforts  of  large  bodies 
of  men  like  yours  are  very  apt  to  be  productive 
of  effects  the  very  opposite  of  those  which  it 
is  desired  to  attain.  It  is  also  the  case  that 
men  do  not  always  act  in  accordance  with  their 
avowed  principles.  I  therefore  ask  leave  once 
more  to  call  your  attention  to  some  utterances 
in  your  platform.  I  find  the  first  object  at 
which  you  aim  to  be  expressed  in  the  follow- 
ing words : 

I.  "To  make  industrial  and  moral  worth, 
not  wealth,  the  true  standard  of  individual  and 
national  greatness.'7 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  143 

I  think  this  looks  in  the  right  direction. 
True,  it  implies  that  wealth  is  something  en- 
tirely disconnected  from  either  industrial  or 
moral  worth,  and  if  you  have  carefully  read 
the  preceding  chapters  you  will  see  that  this 
is  a  mistake.  But  I  do  not  now  insist  upon 
this  point.  The  great  question  I  have  now  to 
put  to  you  is  this :  What  does  your  order  of 
Knights  of  Labor  do  to  promote  industrial 
worth  ?  To  answer  this  question  we  must  in- 
quire what  industrial  worth  is  and  how  it  is  to 
be  measured. 

It  is  very  clear  to  me  that  industrial  worth 
is  to  be  measured  by  the  amount  of  good 
which  a  man  does  by  his  labor,  bodily  or  men- 
tal. For  example :  The  industrial  worth  of  a 
bricklayer  is  to  be  estimated  by  the  number 
and  quality  of  the  buildings,  the  walls  of  which 
he  erects.  The  industrial  worth  of  the  miner 
is  measured  by  the  quantity  of  coal  which  he 
gets  out  of  the  ground.  The  industrial  worth 
of  the  engine-driver  is  determined  by  the  ef- 
fectiveness with  which  he  performs  his  duty, 
and  the  certainty  and  safety  writh  which  he 
brings  his  train  into  the  station  at  the  ap- 
pointed time.  In  a  word,  the  industrial  worth 
of  every  man  is  measured  by  the  products  of 
10 


146  A   PLAIN   MANT8   TALK 

his  labor,  and  the  more  useful  these  products 
the  greater  is  his  worth. 

If,  then,  you  really  held  industrial  worth  to 
be  one  of  the  great  standards  of  individual  and 
national  greatness,  and  if  you  acted  consist- 
ently with  this  view,  you  would  do  all  you 
could  to  increase  this  worth  by  increasing  the 
products  of  every  man's  labor.  You  would 
discourage  the  eight-hour  movement,  because 
it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  industrial  worth 
of  a  man  who  only  works  eight  hours  is  less 
than  that  of  a  man  who  works  ten  hours.  You 
would  oppose  all  the  regulations  of  labor  unions 
which  require  their  members  to  refuse  to  work 
with  men  who  do  not  belong  to  the  union. 
You  would  oppose  strikes,  because  a  man  on 
strike  has  no  industrial  worth  at  all.  You 
would  encourage  the  boys  now  growing  up  in 
idleness  to  learn  trades.  You  would  do  a  great 
many  other  good  things  to  promote  industrial 
worth  in  the  community  at  large. 

If  you  were  seriously  attempting  to  carry 
out  these  objects  I  should  so  far  heartily  sym- 
pathize with  you.  But  are  you  really  doing  so  ? 
I  think  not.  At  least  I  never  heard  of  any 
assembly  of  Knights  of  Labor  opposing  any  of 
the  restrictive  rules  of  the  trades-unions  or 


ON   THE    LABOB   QUESTION.  147 

trying  in  any  way  to  increase  the  industrial 
worth  of  its  members. 

Now,  when  any  person  wants  the  public  to 
adopt  his  principles,  the  very  first  step  is  to 
show  that  he  believes  in  them  himself.  Hence 
you  cannot  expect  to  take  any  step  towards 
making  industrial  worth  a  standard  of  great- 
ness so  long  as  your  acts  show  that  you  your- 
selves place  so  low  an  estimate  upon  your  own 
industrial  worth. 

I  am  very  sorry  for  this.  I  think  every  man 
ought  to  be  proud  of  his  work.  He  benefits 
his  fellow-men  by  his  work,  and  he  ought  to 
be  proud  of  rendering  that  benefit.  I  may  be 
mistaken,  and  if  I  am  I  shall  want  to  be  cor- 
rected, but  I  fear  that  very  few  skilled  laborers 
at  the  present  time  are  proud  of  their  work. 
This  ought  not  to  be.  It  seems  to  me  that 
every  man  who  does  good  work  should  take 
the  same  delight  in  it  that  authors  take  in 
writing  books,  and  merchants  in  directing  com- 
merce. I  remember  that  when  a  boy  of  four- 
teen I  made  a  clock-reel,  an  instrument  to 
wind  yarn  upon,  which  snapped  a  spring  once 
in  forty  turns  to  show  that  a  knot  had  been 
wound.  I  do  not  think  I  have  ever  done  any- 
thing since  of  which  I  was  prouder  than  of 


148  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

having  made  that  clock-reel.  I  mention  this 
merely  to  show  that  an  ordinary  boy,  if  not  a 
man,  can  be  proud  of  doing  a  very  simple  job. 
\  If  I  am  right  in  thinking  that  you  do  not 
take  pride  in  your  work,  then  there  is  certainly 
something  wrong.  But  I  do  not  by  any  means 
wish  to  imply  that  the  fault  is  all,  or  principally, 
on  your  side.  The  real  fault  is  to  be  found  in 
the  theories  which  run  through  society.  You 
have  so  long  and  often  been  told  by  word  and 
action  that  you  are  condemned  to  a  hard  fate ; 
that  other  men  reap  the  fruits  of  your  labor ; 
and  that  labor  itself  is  a  mark  of  degradation, 
that  although  you  would  rather  not  believe 
these  things,  you  cannot  help  accepting  them 
as  in  some  sort  a  necessary  result  of  the  pre- 
vailing opinion  of  labor.  Hence  the  first 
plank  in  your  platform,  which  I  have  just 
quoted,  is  not  a  theory  which  you  believe  and 
r  act  upon,  so  much  as  it  is  a  theory  which  you 
would  like  to  have  believed  and  acted  upon,  if 
society  only  took  the  same  view  of  the  case. 

I  also  fear  that  labor  organizations  have  had 
a  bad  effect  in  making  the  workman  under- 
estimate the  value  of  his  labor,  and  look  upon 
it  as  pure  drudgery.  How  could  it  be  other- 
wise when  all  the  rules  and  regulations  of 


ON  THE  X.ABOK  QUESTION.  149 

such  organizations  imply  that  the  greater  the 
quantity  of  work  done  by  its  members  or  by 
others,  the  worse  it  is  for  them  ?  Now,  no 
man  can  be  proud  of  that  which  it  is  unde- 
sirable to  do.  Hence  the  first  step  towards 
the  better  state  of  things  called  for  in  your 
platform  is  to  get  rid  of  the  theory  that  real 
industrial  worth  is  something  to  be  discour- 
aged, and  to  adopt  the  theory  that  it  is  some- 
thing to  be  promoted. 

The  second  object  at  which  you  aim  is  also 
so  good  that  I  shall  here  quote  it  in  full : 

II.  "  To  secure  to  the  workers  the  full  en- 
joyment of  the  wealth  they  create ;  sufficient 
leisure  in  which  to  develop  their  moral  and 
social  faculties ;  all  of  the  benefits  of  recrea- 
tion and  pleasure  of  association ;  in  a  word,  to 
enable  them  to  share  in  the  gains  and  honors 
of  advancing  civilization." 

I  say  this  is  an  excellent  object.  The  way 
to  attain  it  is  to  increase  the  industrial  worth 
of  the  laborer  by  training  every  boy  who  has 
the  skill  to  learn  a  trade  into  a  good  workman, 
so  that  there  shall  be  plenty  of  everything  for 
everybody's  use. 

There  are  many  other  good  things  in  your 
platform.  But  there  are  at  least  two  things 


150  A   PLAIN    MAN'S   TALK 

which  are  so  bad  as  to  more  than  offset  any 
good  which  could  be  possibly  done  by  an  or- 
ganization like  yours. 

One  of  your  demands  is  for  an  issue  of  gov- 
ernment paper  money.  Now,  if  there  is  any 
one  instrumentality  invented  by  Satan  to  cheat 
the  laborer  out  of  his  earnings,  it  is  what  is 
called  "fiat  money."  It  cheats  him  because 
it  continually  pretends  to  pay  more  than  it 
really  does  pay.  He  agrees  to  work  for  "  dol- 
lars," and  when  he  gets  his  dollars  they  are 
not  real  money  at  all,  only  little  paper  pict- 
ures stamped  "  one  dollar  "  by  Congress. 

You  may  ask,  If  one  of  them  will  buy  me 
as  much  as  a  gold  dollar,  why  is  it  not  just  as 
good  as  a  gold  dollar  ?  I  answer  it  would  be 
as  good  if  it  were  redeemable  in  a  gold  dollar ; 
but  the  supporters  of  fiat  money  do  not  want 
it  so  redeemed.  Now  all  history  and  rea- 
son show  that  unless  an  issue  of  this  kind  of 
money  is  greatly  restricted,  more  restricted, 
indeed,  than  a  believer  in  it  would  admit  of, 
it  is  sure  to  depreciate,  and  no  longer  to  buy 
a  dollar's  worth.  The  more  it  depreciates  the 
more  anxious  people  are  to  get  it,  and  the 
more  anxious  they  are  to  get  rid  of  it  when 
they  get  it,  and  the  result  of  this  is  a  contin- 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  151 

ual  increase  in  the  price  of  everything  we  eat, 
drink,  and  wear.  It  is  hard  to  imagine  what 
labor  organizations  could  have  proposed  worse 
for  themselves  than  this.  It  is  like  petition- 
ing Congress  to  allow  them  to  be  cheated  out 
of  their  wages. 

Yet  another  plank  which  shows  as  little 
practical  wisdom  is  that  which  demands  the 
purchase  of  all  telegraphs  and  railroads  by 
the  government.  If  you  had  stopped  at  tele- 
graphs it  would  not  have  been  so  bad,  be- 
cause the  management  of  a  telegraph  system 
is  not  so  complex  a  matter  as  that  of  a  rail- 
road system,  and,  besides,  private  corporations 
have  not  managed  our  telegraphs  so  well  as 
they  have  the  railroads.  But  to  ask  that  the 
government  shall  take  possession  of  the  rail- 
roads and  run  them  shows  a  woful  lack  of 
practical  knowledge.  Such  a  demand  could 
never  have  been  proposed  by  any  one  having 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  way  in  which 
government  business  is  managed.  It  is  most 
fortunate  for  the  laboring  man  that  there  is 
so  little  chance  for  carrying  out  this  plank  of 
your  platform. 


152  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 


XYI. 

HOW  CAN  ALL   GET  BETTER    WAGES? 

ALL  of  us  want  to  earn  higher  wages  and 
are  trying  to  do  so.  It  is  a  good  thing  for  all 
of  us  that  we  should  try  to  do  so,  because,  if 
we  go  about  it  in  the  right  way,  we  shall  ben- 
efit other  people  as  well  as  ourselves  by  earn- 
ing higher  wages.  ^  The  right  way  to  get  bet- 
Iter  wages  is  to  render  more  and  better  ser- 
vices to  our  fellow-men,  and  thus  induce  them 
to  pay  us  more  for  our  services. 

But  what  are  the  real  wages  we  are  trying 
to  earn  ?  The  common  answer  will  be ;  wages 
are  so  many  dollars  and  cents  per  day  or  week. 
This  answer  is  perfectly  correct,  so  far  as  the 
receipts  of  money  are  concerned.  We  are  all 
working  to  get  dollars.  But  having  got  the 
dollars,  are  our  wants  then  supplied  ?  By  no 
means.  We  cannot  eat  the  dollars  nor  sleep 
upon  them,  nor  hold  them  over  our  heads  to 
protect  us  from  the  sun  and  rain,  nor  put  them 
to  any  useful  purpose  whatever.  Then  why 


ON   THE   LABOE   QUESTION.  153 

do  \ve  care  for  them  at  all  ?  Because  with 
them  we  buy  the  things  we  want — food,  cloth- 
ing, and  shelter.  The  real  wages  which  we 
earn  in  the  course  of  the  year  are,  not  dollars, 
but  so  many  suits  of  clothes,  the  privilege  of 
living  in  a  certain  house,  and  so  many  barrels 
of  flour,  meal,  and  pork.  These,  and  these 
alone,  are  the  real  wages ;  the  dollars  are  the 
mere  symbols  which  we  use  to  get  our  real 
wages. 

You  will  reply  to  this :  "  Yery  true,  but 
the  more  dollars  I  earn  the  more  and  better 
food  and  clothing  I  can  buy  for  myself  and 
my  family." 

Here  I  join  issue  with  you.  It  does  not 
follow  that  you  can  get  more  of  the  necessa- 
ries of  life  whenever  you  earn  more  money  in 
the  course  of  the  year.  If  prices  rise  in  the 
same  proportion  with  your  wages  then  you 
gain  nothing.  The  man  who  gets  double 
wages  and  has  to  pay  double  prices  for  every- 
thing he  gets  is  no  better  off  than  before. 
The  real  problem  of  getting  higher  wages  is 
either  to  earn  more  money  without  making 
prices  any  higher,  or  to  adopt  such  a  policy 
that  the  prices  of  the  necessaries  of  life  shall 
be  lower,  without  people  in  general  earning 


154  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

any  less  wages.  Either  of  these  results  will 
amount  to  an  increase  of  wages. 

But  you  may  think  that  it  is  quite  excep- 
tional if  more  wages  do  not  buy  more  food. 
To  see  how  far  this  is  true,  let  us  climb  up  to 
our  old  standpoint  and  look  once  more  at  the 
interests  of  the  country  at  large. 

The  organization  of  the  Knights  of  Labor 
has  one  very  wise  and  liberal  feature,  in  that 
it  recognizes  all  men  who  work  for  their  liv- 
ing as  being  laborers,  and  therefore  makes 
them  eligible  to  its  ranks.  If  I  am  rightly 
informed,  gentlemen  of  leisure,  capitalists, 
great  managers  and  employers  of  labor,  and 
liquor  dealers,  are  the  only  classes  who  are 
deemed  ineligible.  These  form  a  very  small 
fraction  of  the  adult  population.  I  call  atten- 
tion to  this  fact  because  it  enables  lis  to  agree 
that  the  laborers,  whose  interests  I  have  all 
along  been  considering  in  these  talks,  form, 
with  their  families  and  dependants,  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  population. 

A  very  little  consideration  will  show  us 
that  they  do  the  larger  part  of  the  eating 
and  wearing  out  of  clothes,  and  occupy  most 
of  the  houses.  The  richest  man  in  the  coun- 
try eats  little  more  beef  or.  flour  than  the 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  155 

day  laborer,  and  he  probably  eats  less  corn- 
meal  and  pork.  He  does  not  wear  out  much 
more  clothing.  For,  although  he  spends  more 
money  in  clothes,  he  does  not  wear  them 
until  they  are  used  up,  but  soon  passes  them 
over  to  some  poorer  man,  to  be  worn  out  by 
him.  He  does,  indeed,  live  in  a  much  bigger 
house  than  the  poor  man,  and  lias  much  more 
costly  furniture,  and  a  greater  variety  of  pict- 
ures and  books.  It  is  only  in  this  way  that 
he  consumes  much  more  of  the  good  things 
of  life  than  the  poor  man  does. 

Now  a  very  little  thought  will  show  you 
that  it  is  physically  and  mathematically  im- 
possible that  higher  wages  should  enable  the 
great  masses  of  people  of  the  country  to  get 
more  or  better  food  or  clothes,  unless  more  or, 
better  food  and  clothes  are  made.  Doubling1 
the  wages  of  farm  hands  will  not  increase  the 
crop.  Increasing  the  wages  of  operators  will 
not  add  anything  to  the  horse-power  of  the 
engine,  and  so  on  through  the  list.  What, 
then,  would  be  the  consequence  if  everybody 
could,  from  and  after  January  1,  next,  have 
his  weekly  wages  exactly  doubled  ?  The  re- 
sult would  be  that  everything  he  wanted  to 
buy  would  be  just  twice  as  dear  as  before.  It 


156  A   PLAIN   MAN'S  TALK 

would  have  to  be  so,  because  it  is  mathemati- 
cally and  physically  impossible  that  everybody 
should  be  able  to  buy  more  things  than  he  did 
before.  He  cannot  buy  more  than  are  made, 
and  no  more  are  made  than  before.  True,  the 
rise  of  prices  might  not  occur  immediately. 
There  might  be  a  few  days,  weeks,  or  months, 
during  which  everybody  could  buy  more  flour, 
beef,  and  clothing  with  the  increased  wages. 
But,  in  so  doing,  we  would  be  merely  drawing 
upon  the  stock  in  hand  of  these  articles  which 
is  stored  away  in  the  great  warehouses,  and 
the  result  would  be  a  future  scarcity,  which 
again  would  more  than  double  the  prices. 

You  reply  to  this :  "  But  we  do  not  want  a 
policy  which  doubles  everybody's  wages.  We 
do  not  wrant  the  rich  man,  the  capitalist,  the 
great  managers,  to  have  any  larger  incomes 
than  before.  Now,  suppose  we  could  adopt  a 
policy  which  would  leave  their  incomes  un- 
touched, and  only  increase  those  of  the  labor- 
ing masses ;  what  then  ?" 

The  answer  to  this  I  have  already  given  in 
Chapter  IV.  I  there  pointed  out  that  no  rise 
in  price  diminishes  the  consumption  of  the 
necessaries  of  life  by  the  rich.  The  latter 
consume  just  as  much  flour,  beef,  arid  clothes 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  157 

when  the  prices  go  up  as  they  did  before. 
Therefore  it  would  still  be  mathematically  im- 
possible for  the  poorer  classes  to  buy  any  more 
of  these  necessaries  than  they  did  before,  no 
matter  how  much  you  increased  their  wages. 

Do  I  mean,  then,  to  say  that  if  the  carpen- 
ters all  got  double  wages  they  could  not  buy 
more  than  before  ?  Not  at  all.  If  carpenters 
had  their  wages  increased,  while  all  other  la- 
boring men  got  the  same  wages,  it  is  quite 
true  that  the  carpenters  would  be  able  to  buy 
and  consume  nearly  twice  as  much  of  the 
necessaries  of  life.  But  what  would  be  the 
consequence  ?  With  no  increase  of  produc- 
tion there  would  be  just  so  much  less  of  tho 
necessaries  of  life  for  all  other  laborers,  and 
thus  all  the  other  laborers  would  suffer  more 
or  less  by  the  carpenters  earning  higher  wages. 
Prices  would  be  higher,  while  the  wages  would 
be  the  same  as  before. . 

In  what  precedes  I  have  talked  as  if  it  were 
a  very  simple  and  easy  matter  to  get  an  increase 
of  money  wages.  This  is  a  wrong  notion,  be- 
cause the  amount  of  money  which  any  person 
or  corporation  can  pay  in  wages  is  limited  by 
its  or  his  means  of  payment.  If  a  factory  can 
produce  and  sell  fifty  thousand  dollars'  worth 

•  • 


158 

of  cloth  in  a  year,  then  $50,000  is  the  sum  total 
which  it  could  possibly  pay  out  to  employees 
of  all  kinds  in  the  course  of  any  year.  It 
can,  perhaps,  pay  one  half  this  sum  to  its  own 
operatives.  A  portion  of  the  other  half  will 
be  paid  for  material,  such  as  wool  or  cotton, 
and  the  owners  of  this  material  can  pay  just 
that  much  and  no  more  in  wages  for  produc- 
ing more  cotton  and  cloth.  Another  portion 
will  be  paid  to  its  stockholders  and  managers, 
and  these  men  will  then  have  just  so  much  to 
pay  directly  or  indirectly  in  wages  to  those 
who  supply  them  with  the  necessaries  of  life. 
Suppose,  then,  that  the  factory  is  compelled 
to  pay  higher  wages.  Then  it  must  either 
lessen  its  force  or  it  must  charge  a  higher 
price  for  its  products.  In  the  latter  case  it 
will  be  bad  for  everybody  who  has  to  buy  cloth, 
especially  for  laborers.  In  fact,  the  chances 
are  that  fewer  people  will  buy  the  cloth,  and 
thus  the  result  will  be,  in  the  end,  a  diminu- 
tion of  production.  What  is  true  of  this  fac- 
tory is  true  all  the  way  through  society.  All 
other  conditions  being  the  same,  one  class 
cannot  get  an  increase  in  money  wages  except 
at  the  expense  of  other  classes.  Please  re- 
member that  I  say,  "all  other  conditions 


ON  THE   LABOR  QUESTION.  159 

being  equal."  If  with  an  increase  of  wages 
the  laborer  makes  a  better  article  than  before, 
or  a  kind  of  article  that  serves  a  better  pur- 
pose, then  his  increase  of  wages  will  not  be  at 
anybody's  expense.  But  if  everything  he  does 
is  to  go  on  just  in  the  same  way  as  before,  the 
only  result  will  be  that  everybody  who  has  to 
buy  the  things  he  makes  will  have  to  pay 
more  for  them. 

The  inevitable  conclusion  is  that,  taking  the 
laboring  classes  at  large,  and  considering  their 
general  condition,  that  condition  cannot  be  im- 
proved by  mere  increase  of  wages,  unless  larger 
and  better  houses  are  built  for  them  to  live 
in,  better  food  obtained  for  them  to  eat,  nicer 
clothes  made  for  them  to  wear,  better  beds 
made  for  them  to  sleep  on,*  The  country  at 
large  must  make  so  many  hair  mattresses  and 
soft  blankets  that  there  shall  be  enough  to  go 
all  round,  supplying  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich. 
We  must  build  plenty  of  houses,  so  that  every- 
body shall  have  plenty  of  house-room.  This 
requires  that  we  shall  make  more  bricks,  get 
more  timber,  and  employ  more  men  in  learn- 
ing how  to  build  houses.  Inventors  must  de- 
vise improved  machinery  for  making  furniture, 
so  that  our  factories  shall  turn  it  out  in  such 


160  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

quantities  that  there  shall  be  cushioned  chairs 
for  everybody  to  sit  upon,  and  handsome  china 
plates  for  everybody  to  eat  off  of. 

Conversely,  if  all  these  improvements  are 
made  in  production  we  are  sure  to  get  the 
advantage  of  them,  no  matter  whether  our 
wages  are  increased  or  not.  The  good  things 
will  all  go  begging  rather  than  remain  year 
after  year  unsold,  and  will  be  sure  to  find  pur- 
chasers. 

If  the  Knights  of  Labor  will  turn  the  great 
power  of  their  organization  towards  the  stir- 
ring-up  of  everybody  to  carry  out  these  objects, 
by  inducing  young  boys  to  learn  all  sorts  of 
trades,  instead  of  idling  about  the  streets,  by 
encouraging  rich  men  to  invest  their  money 
in  machinery,  and  by  insuring  everybody  who 
shall  take  part  in  the  enterprise  the  secure  en- 
joyment of  all  his  rights,  then  they  will  render 
a  benefit  to  themselves  and  their  fellow-labor- 
ers of  the  country  and  of  the  world. 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  161 


XVII. 

CHEAP  LABOR  AND  ITS  EFFECTS. 

IF  the  reader  has  carefully  studied  the  pre- 
ceding chapters  he  will  see  that  there  must  be 
something  wrong  in  the  theories  on  which 
labor  organizations  are  generally  based.  At 
the  same  time  it  may  seem  to  him  that  every 
effort  which  the  labor  movement  is  engaged 
in  is  a  perfectly  natural  result  of  sound  rea- 
soning. Such  being  the  case,  the  thinking 
man  who  desires  to  have  none  but  correct  theo- 
ries will  not  be  satisfied  with  the  mere  sus- 
picion that  the  labor  theories  are  wrong.  He 
may  say  to  me :  "  What  you  have  said  seems 
quite  plausible.  At  the  same  time  the  course 
of  thought  by  which  I  havq  been  led  to  favor 
the  labor  movement  seems  to  me  still  more 
plausible ;  at  least  I  do  not  see  anything  wrong 
in  it.  I  feel,  therefore,  a  certain  amount  of  con- 
fusion and  doubt  on  the  subject,  because  two 
ways  of  looking  at  the  subject,  both  of  wrhiclx 
seem  sound,  lead  to  contradictory  results." 
11 


163  A   PLAIN   MAN  S    TALK 

I  now  have  to  clear  up  this  difficulty  by 
showing  what  is  wrong  in  the  popular  theories 
on  which  the  labor  movement  is  based.  To 
the  common  mind  some  of  these  theories  look 
so  plain  and  simple  that  they  cannot  be 
doubted,  while  all  seem  to  have  much  in  their 
favor;  yet  I  hope  to  show  you  that  they  are 
jentirely  unsound.  I  shall  try  to  put  these 
'principles  in  the  clearest  light,  so  that  every 
promoter  of  the  labor  movement  will  recognize 
them  as  being  the  embodiment  of  his  own 
ideas,  and  as  being  what  he  would  himself  say 
if  called  upon  to  defend  his  position.  I  state 
them  as  follows : 

Firstly,  when  one  man  competes  with  an- 
other by  underselling  him  in  the  market  or 
working  for  lower  wages  than  the  latter  gets, 
you  hold  that  he  does  him  an  injury  by  lessen- 
ing the  demand  for  his  goods  or  his  labor. 
For  example,  bricklayers  in  a  certain  town  are 
getting  $4  per  day.  A  half-dozen  bricklayers 
come  from  some  other  city  and  offer  to  work 
for  $2  per  day.  You  think  that  they  injure 
the  home  bricklayers  who  have  been  getting 
the  higher  wages,  by  depressing  their  wages 
either  to  $2  a  day  or  to  some  intermediate 
point,  say  $3  or  $3.50. 


ON  THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  163 

Secondly,  carrying  out  this  principle,  you 
claim  that  unlimited  competition  is  an  evil,  in 
that  men  who  compete  with  each  other  to  fur- 
nish labor  or  goods  at  the  lowest  price  that  • 
they  are  able  to,  injure  each  other,  and  hence 
injure  society  at  large.     Hence  you  want  to.  \ 
limit  competition. 

Thirdly,  if  called  upon  to  defend  these  prin- 
ciples you  would  probably  say  that  the  man 
who  worked  more  cheaply  than  another  took 
work  from  that  other  man. 

I  might  ask  you,  why  so  ?  If  one  man  is 
drinking  water  out  of  a  river  and  two  or  three 
other  men  come  and  drink  water  from  the 
same  river,  they  do  not  take  water  from  the 
first  man,  because  there  is  enough  for  all  of 
them  and  a  thousand  times  more. 

You  would  probably  reply  to  this,  that  al- 
though there  is  water  enough  in  the  river  for 
everybody  and  a  thousand  times  over,  there  is 
not  work  enough  in  the  country,  even  for  the 
people  already  in  it,  and,  therefore,  to  get  a 
parallel  I  ought  to  take  a  case  where  there  is 
not  water  enough  to  go  around.  Then,  of  course, 
the  three  new  men  would  take  water  from  the 
first.  You  would  claim  in  the  same  way  that 
competing  laborers  took  work  from  each  other. 


164  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK. 

Now  I  wish  to  point  out  to  you  that  these 
principles  are,  to  a  great  extent,  fallacious. 
When  I  say  that  they  are  fallacious  I  do  not 
mean  that  they  are  all  the  reverse  of  truth,  as 
if  they  had  claimed  that  black  was  white  and 
white  was  black.  What  I  mean  is  that  they 
are  true  only  to  a  limited  extent,  and  on  one 
side,  as  it  were,  and  that  it  is  not  this  true  side 
of  them  which  is  put  into  practice. 

To  begin  with  the  third  principle.  I  think 
you  can  see  without  doubt  that  you  are  wrong 
in  thinking  that  the  work  to  be  done  is  lim- 
ited. Millions  of  farmers  in  the  Western 
states  and  territories  are  calling  loudly  for 
railways  to  be  extended  to  their  neighborhood 
in  order  that  they  may  send  their  products  to 
market  and  get  back  the  manufactures  which 
they  are  in  need  of.  Thirty  millions  of  people 
within  these  United  States  want  their  houses 
improved.  They  would  like  to  have  better 
,  walls,  and  roofs  that  would  never  leak,  and 
new  stoves  or  furnaces  to  warm  them  in  win- 
ter. That  same  number  of  people  want  newer 
and  whiter  table-cloths,  warmer  and  nicer  cloth- 
ing, better  beds,  the  means  of  sending  their 
children  to  school  in  winter,  books  and  papers 
for  them  to  read)  and,  indeed,  an  unlimited 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  165 

supply  of  good  things  of  all  kinds.  You  know 
perfectly  well  that  all  these  things  require 
labor  to  produce  them,  and  that  the  reason 
that  everybody  is  in  want  of  them  is  that  all 
the  labor  of  the  country  is  not  sufficient  to 
supply  them,  unless  people  do  more  work  than 
they  are  accustomed  to. 

If  you  will  follow  up  this  train  of  thought 
by  spending  some  five  minutes  in  thinking  of 
everything  you  would  like  to  have,  and  five 
minutes  more  in  thinking  of  everything  your 
neighbor  would  like  to  have,  and  then  calcu- 
late how  much  labor  it  would  take  to  supply 
all  these  wants,  you  will  see  that  the  amount 
of  work  to  be  done  is  really  unlimited. 

Why  is  there  any  obstacle  to  this  work  be- 
ing done  ?  Why  has  not  everybody  got  all 
the  work  he  \vants  ?  The  answer  is :  People 
have  not  money  enough  to  pay  for  it.  Ah ! 
Here  is  the  rub.  There  is  work  enough  to  ~be 
done,  ~but  people  have  not  the  money  to  pay  for 
it.  If  you  are  a  carpenter  and  earn  $3  a  day 
for  250  days  in  the  year  you  have  just  $750 
to  buy  the  products  of  other  people's  labor 
with,  and  this  makes  up  all  the  wages  you 
can  pay  to  others.  Thus  we  reach  the  first 
great  modification  which  your  principle  re- 


106  A   PLAIN   MAN  8   TALK 

quires  :  It  is  not  the  work  to  be  done  which 
is  limited,  but  it  is  the  wages  which  people 
can  afford  to  pay  for  that  work.  And  here 
you  must  not  forget  what  I  pointed  out  in  a 
preceding  chapter,  that  the  real  wages  are  not 
the  money,  but  what  the  laborer  buys  with 
the  money. 

Let  us  now  go  back  to  our  first  example. 
A  hundred  bricklayers  are  at  work  in  a  town 
at  $4  a  da}r.  Ten  new  ones  come  in  and  of- 
fer to  lay  bricks  at  $2  a  day.  "Will  not  the 
wages  of  the  hundred  bricklayers  then  be  de- 
pressed ?  Are  people  going  to  pay  $4:  a  day 
for  work  when  they  can  get  it  done  for  $2  a 
day  ?  Before  we  can  fully  answer  this  ques- 
tion we  must  look  carefully  into  the  condi- 
tions. Perhaps  the  ten  new  bricklayers  can 
only  do  the  work  of  five  old  ones.  In  this 
case  they  will  not  really  be  any  cheaper  than 
the  old  ones,  and  will  not  injuriously  compete 
with  them.  If  they  really  do  a  full  day's  work 
they  would  be  fools  to  work  for  $2  per  day 
when  they  could  get  almost  $4.  But,  to  get 
the  strongest  possible  case  for  your  principle, 
suppose  they  are  just  such  fools,  or,  if  you 
choose,  such  philanthropists,  that  they  don't 
want  more  than  $2  per  day.  Then  many  peo- 


ON   THE    LABOR  QUESTION.  167 

pie  will  be  anxious  to  get  their  services.  To 
make  the  case  as  strong  as  possible,  suppose 
some  of  the  master  builders  who  have  been 
paying  the  highest  wages  discharge  ten  of  their 
men  and  take  the  new  men  in  their  places. 
What  will  be  the  result? 

To  answer  this  question  we  must  remember 
that  before  the  ten  cheap  men  came  there 
were  in  the  town  so  many  people  in  want  of 
houses  being  built  that  they  were  willing  to 
give  $4  per  day  to  a  hundred  bricklayers. 
That  is,  they  would  rather  pay  these  high 
wages  than  not  have  their  work  done.  No 
doubt  they  would  all  like  to  have  their  work 
done  at  half  price,  but  they  cannot  possibly 
get  it  so  done,  because  there  are  only  ten  cheap 
men,  whereas  a  hundred  are  wanted  to  do  the 
work.  The  latter  is  worth  just  as  much  as  it 
was  before  the  cheap  men  came,  so  that  the 
ninety  bricklayers  who  were  not  discharged 
may  still  command  $4  per  day. 

But  what  will  the  ten  men  who  are  dis- 
charged do  ?  I  answer,  when  there  are  a  num- 
ber of  men  willing  to  give  $4  per  day  for 
bricklayers  there  are  always  a  number  of  others 
who  think  they  cannot  afford  to  have  their 
bricklaying  done  at  that  price,  but  who  would 


168 

be  willing  to  pay  some  lower  price,  say  $3.75. 
The  ten  discharged  men  will  have  no  trouble 
in  getting  work  at  these  wages. 

Thus  it  is  perfectly  true  that  the  wages  of 
the  bricklayers  are,  on  the  average,  slightly 
depressed  by  the  introduction  of  the  ten  new 
men.  We  may  suppose  that  in  the  long  run 
the  other  ninety  will  have  to  submit  to  the 
same  reduction,  and  get  only  $3.75  instead  of 
$4.  Up  to  this  point  you  are  quite  right  in 
saying  that  the  competition  of  new  and  cheap 
men  will  depress  the  wages  of  others  to  a  cer- 
tain extent.  You  are  wrong  in  supposing  it 
would  depress  them  to  any  wages  the  new  men 
choose  to  work  for.  If  the  latter  demanded 
the  highest  wages  they  could  get,  then  all 
would  be  employed  at  $3.75  per  day. 

If  this  were  the  end  of  the  matter  then  your 
principle  would  be  sounder  than  it  is,  but  it  is 
not  the  end  of  the  matter.  I  think,  however, 
this  is  about  as  far  as  we  can  go  without  stop- 
ping to  rest,  so  let  us  take  a  breathing-spell 
before  showing  what  the  end  of  the  matter  is. 


ON   THE    LABOR    QUESTION.  169 


XVIII. 

THE  SAME  SUBJECT  CONTINUED. 

IN  order  to  continue  the  examination  which 
we  started  in  the  last  chapter,  it  is  necessary 
to  explain  a  somewhat  intricate  principle  on 
which  the  whole  result  turns. 

Let  us  suppose  that  there  are  ten  men,  James, 
John,  William,  Peter,  etc.,  who  are  working  in 
co-operation  with  each  other,  and  are  trying  to 
promote  each  other's  interests  as  well  as  their 
own,  so  as  to  do,  on  the  whole,  what  is  best  for 
all  ten  of  them. 

A  party  comes  to  them  and  proposes  that 
they  shall  engage  with  him  in  some  enterprise, 
no  matter  what,  in  which  each  man  shall  take 
a  different  part.  On  calculating  the  profit 
and  loss  to  be  expected,  they  find  that  Peter 
will  lose  three  cents  while  the  nine  others  will 
gain  one  cent  each.  Peter  does  not  want  to 
lose  three  cents,  and  they  do  not  want  him  to 
lose  it,  so  they  all  say,  "  It  is  too  bad  if  we,  to 
make  one  cent  each,  cause  Peter  to  lose  three 


170  A   PLAIN    MAN  8    TALK 

cents.  Therefore  we  will  reject  this  man's 
proposal." 

Next  day  another  man  comes  and  offers  em- 
ployment under  which  John  would  lose  three 
cents  while  all  the  rest  would  gain  one  cent 
each  as  before.  They  reject  this  proposal  for 
the  same  reason.  So  they  go  on  from  day  to 
day  rejecting  all  proposals  by  which  any  one 
of  their  number  shall  lose. 

Then  an  offer  is  made  them  by  which  Peter 
would  gain  three  cents  while  the  other  nine 
would  lose  but  one  cent  each.  "It  will  be 
very  nice  for  Peter  to  gain  three  cents,"  they 
all  say,  "and  what  do  we  care  for  one  cent. 
Let  us  accept  this  proposal  for  Peter's  sake. 
By  to-morrow  we  shall  have  an  offer  by  which 
William  shall  gain  three  cents,  and  next  day 
one  by  which  John  shall  gain  three  cents,  and 
so  on.  We  will  accept  all  these  offers,  and 
thus  we  shall  all  get  the  advantages  of  the 
three  cents  while  nobody  will  lose  more  than 
one  cent  at  a  time." 

]STow  it  needs  no  high  mathematics  to  see 
that  these  ten  men  have  been  rejecting  the 
offers  which,  on  the  whole,  would  have  been 
advantageous  to  them,  considered  as  a  single 
body,  and  accepting  disadvantageous  offers. 


ON    THE    LABOR    QUESTION.  171 

They  have  suffered  nine  cents  to  be  lost  for 
every  three  they  have  gained  because,  on  each 
occasion,  they  had  in  view  the  interest  of  the 
one  gainer  and  overlooked  that  of  the  nine 
losers.  Thus  they  rejected  chances  of  gaining 
a  sum  total  of  six  cents  and  accept  chances 
which  led  to  a  loss  of  six  cents. 

This  is  what  men  are  always  doing,  and  al- 
ways proposing  to  do  in  their  action  upon 
economic  questions.  We  may  take  the  pre- 
ceding ten  men  to  represent  so  many  classes 
of  the  leading  laborers ;  say  railroad  employees, 
bricklayers,  carpenters,  tailors,  shoemakers, 
farmers,  factory  hands,  furniture-makers,  etc. 
Whenever  any  measure  is  proposed  by  which 
some  one  of  these  trades  may  lose  a  little,  they 
get  the  others  to  oppose  it,  no  matter  whether 
the  others  gain  or  not.  When  some  one  trade 
has  a  chance  to  gain  it  gets  the  others  to  ac- 
cept, no  matter  if  they  are  all  to  lose.  As  a 
familiar  example,  take  the  case  of  the  strike. 
When  the  street-car  drivers  all  struck  the  la- 
borers of  other  trades  contributed  money  to 
support  them,  and  still  others  suffered  for  want 
of  cars  to  ride  in.  The  sum  total  of  the  loss, 
even  to  the  laboring  classes  alone,  was  in  all 
cases  greater  than  the  sum  total  of  the  gain. 


172  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

Nothing  can  happen  in  the  commercial 
, world  which  will  not  be  more  or  less  to  the 
disadvantage  of  somebody.  If  there  is  a  good 
crop  of  wheat,  the  men  who  are  holding  wheat 
to  sell  are  losers  for  the  time  being.  When 
machinery  is  introduced  to  do  the  work  of  la- 
borers, the  laborers  whose  work  they  take  are 
losers  for  the  time  being.  If  a  man  stops  buy- 
ing luxuries  in  order  to  save  money  to  buy  a 
house,  the  people  who  have  been  making  him 
those  luxuries  are  for  the  time  being  at  a  dis- 
advantage. If  cheap  labor  from  another  state 
is  introduced,  the  laborers  whose  places  are 
taken  are  at  a  temporary  disadvantage.  If  we 
should  attempt  to  stop  all  such  disadvantages 
we  should  have  to  stop  all  improvements  in 
production,  and,  in  fact,  perhaps,  have  to  lapse 
back  into  barbarism. 

A  very  simple  common-sense  rule  will  tell 
us  whether  a  policy  thus  temporarily  disad- 
vantageous should  or  should  not  be  persisted 
in.    What  we  have  to  do  is  not  merely  to  con- 
I  sider  the  persons  who  are  for  the  time  at  a 
'disadvantage,  but  the  sum  total  of  interests  of 
\  the  whole  community,  future  as  well  as  present.! 
If  a  policy  which  leads  to  a  diminution  of 
twenty-five  cents  per  day  in  the  wages  of 


ON   THE   LABOR    QUESTION.  173 

bricklayers  during  a  whole  season  will  result, 
in  a  permanent  advantage  to  all  the  rest  of  the 
community,  not  only  during  the  season,  but  in 
the  future,  it  would  be  folly  to  reject  it.  Oni 
Jthis  principle  let  us  count  up  the  advantages 
and  disadvantages  of  the  state  of  things  de- 
scribed in  our  last  chapter. 

We  there  supposed  ten  cheap-working  brick- 
layers to  come  into  a  city  where  one  hundred 
men  had  been  previously  employed  at  that 
trade  at  $1  per  day.  We  showed  that  the  first 
effect  of  this  would  be  that  which  everybody 
plainly  sees,  that  wages  would  be  depressed  by 
the  competition.  If  the  one  hundred  brick- 
layers were  determined  not  to  work  for  less 
than  $4  per  day,  ten  of  them  would  have  to 
be  thrown  out  of  employment  for  the  time 
being.  They  would  either  have  to  wait  for 
work,  or  go  to  some  other  place  where  they 
might  command  better  wages.  If,  however, 
they  were  willing  to  submit  to  a  reduction  of 
wages  from  $4  to  perhaps  $3.T5,  then  all  would 
find  employment. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  you  for  one  moment  to 
ignore  the  plain  fact  that  so  far  as  these  one 
hundred  bricklayers  are.  for  the  time  being, 
concerned,  this  reduction  of  wages  is  an  evil 


174  A   PLAIN   MAN7S   TALK 

for  them.  But  I  do  wish  you  to  see,  what 
everybody  ignores,  that  this  loss  is  made  tip 
by  a  more  than  equal  gain  for  the  rest  of  the 
community  ;  just  as  Peter's  loss  of  three  cents 
was  offset  by  a  gain  of  one  cent  each  to  his 
nine  fellows,  so  all  other  laborers  will  very  soon 
gain  exactly  what  the  bricklayers  have  lost, 
and,  later,  a  great  deal  more.  To  see  this,  all 
we  have  to  do  is  to  study  out  the  effect  of  the 
changes. 

To  make  this  effect  clear,  suppose  all  the 
bricklayers  are  employed  by  a  single  man. 
Then,  after  wages  are  lowered  twenty -five 
cents  per  day,  that  man  will  be  making  $25 
per  day  extra  profit.  If  he  spends  no  more 
money  than  he  would  have  spent  had  he  gone 
on  paying  the  highest  wages,  then,  at  the  end 
of  one  hundred  days,  he  will  have  $2500  extra 
in  his  bank.  What  will  he  do  with  this  money  ? 
Throw  it  into  the  river?  I  trow  not.  Put  it 
away  in  a  stocking?  Not  if  he  has  common- 
sense  enough  to  manage  a  business.  It  is 
morally  certain  that  he  will  either  buy  some- 
thing with  it  or  hire  somebody  to  work  with 
it.  He  may  start  a  new  house ;  and  then  he 
will  want  an  additional  force  of  bricklayers, 
tinners,  plumbers,  glaziers,  hod -carriers,  and 


ON  THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  175 

teamsters.  He  will  thus  create  an  additional 
demand  for  the  services  of  these  men,  and  they 
would  then  get  in  extra  wages  the  whole  $2500, 
if  he  spent  the  \vhole  of  it  in  this  way.  Per- 
haps, however,  he  will  spend  $300  of  it  in  buy- 
ing his  wife  a  piano,  which  he  would  not  have 
bought  otherwise.  Then  the  music  dealer 
will  have  $300  which  he  would  not  have  had 
if  wrages  had  kept  up.  The  music  dealer  will 
spend  $50  of  this  sum,  perhaps,  in  buying  a 
new  horse>  which  he  could  not  have  bought  if 
he  had  not  sold  the  piano,  and  he  will  send  the 
remainder  to  the  piano  manufacturer  in  pay- 
ment for  pianos  furnished,  and  the  manufac- 
turer wUl  then  have  so  much  more  to  pay  in 
wages  to  his  workmen.  Now,  make  what  sup- 
position you  please  respecting  the  manner  in 
which  the  man  spends  his  money,  and  you 
\vill  find  that  every  cent  which  the  bricklayers 
lose  in  wages  goes  to  the  employment  of  just 
that  much  labor  in  other  kinds  of  work,  so  that 
laborers  as  a  class  do  not  lose  at  all.\ 

You  may  reply  to  this :  "  Let  us  admit  that 
they  do  not  lose,  still  they  do  not  gain  :  hence 
this  lowering  of  wages  is  not  desirable,  because 
it  is  only  giving  to  one  set  of  laborers  what 
properly  belongs  to  another." 


176  A   PLAIN    MAN'S   TALK 

This  objection  would  be  quite  well  founded 
if  we  were  dealing  only  with  the  lowering  of 
wages  of  bricklayers,  regardless  of  the  causes 
by  which  the  depression  was  produced.  But 
let  us  now  go  back  to  the  beginning  and  con- 
sider the  causes  which  we  have  supposed  to 
lead  to  the  depression,  namely,  the  influx  of 
ten  cheap- working  bricklayers.  In  conse- 
quence of  the  arrival  of  these  men  there  are 
one  hundred  and  ten  bricklayers  engaged  in 
building  houses  instead  of  one  hundred.  Tho 
result  is  that  ten  per  cent,  more  houses  are 
built,  and  that  the  whole  community  will  get 
their  houses  cheaper  than  they  otherwise  would, 
?or  will  get  better  houses  at  the  old  prices.  In 
either  case  there  is  a  clear,  permanent  gain  for 
the  whole  community,  laborers  included.  Ev- 
ery laborer  has  a  better  house  than  he  would 
have  had  if  the  cheap  men  had  not  come. 

Now  if  we  reject  this  clear  surplus  of  gains 
over  losses  by  driving  away  or  keeping  out 
these  cheap  bricklayers,  we  will  do  exactly 
what  we  supposed  the  ten  men  to  do  when 
they  rejected  a  chance  to  gain  a  cent  each  be- 
cause some  wie  of  their  number  would  lose 
three  cents.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  deny  that, 
so  far  as  the  bricklayers  themselves  are  con- 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  177 

cerned,  the  loss  would  exceed  the  gain.  The 
cheapening  of  their  rents  would  not  compen- 
sate them  for  the  loss  of  twenty -five  cents  a 
day  in  wages.  But  next  week  some  other 
chance  will  arise  by  which  they  will  gain.  A 
new  railroad  will  be  built  which  will  bring 
them  cheaper  goods.  A  new  post-office  will 
be  built,  and  there  will  be  an  extra  demand  for 
their  labor.  Some  of  them  will  die  or  will 
leave  for  other  cities,  and  there  will  be  none 
to  take  their  places  until  their  own  wages  are 
raised.  In  a  word,  they  take  their  chances 
like  everybody  else,  and  good  chances  are  sure 
to  come  as  well  as  bad  ones. 

I  think  if  you  look  at  the  facts  of  the  case 
you  will  see  that  the  soundness  of  this  princi- 
ple is  proved  by  facts.  Take,  for  example,  the 
Chinese  emigration  into  California.  The  ef- 
fect of  this  emigration  is  commonly  supposed 
to  be  the  depression  of  wrages  on  the  Pacific 
Coast.  I  think,  however,  if  you  study  out 
the  matter  you  will  find  that  such  is  not  the 
case,  and  that  there  is  no  place  where  the  in- 
dustrious laborer  is  better  off  to-day  than  he 
is  in  California.  Whatever  he  has  lost  by 
Chinese  competition  he  has  more  than  gained 
by  the  cheapening  of  the  necessaries  of  life. 
12 


178  A    PLAIN   MAN  8   TALK 


XIX. 

IS  WASTE  A  GOOD? 

IN  the  last  two  talks  I  set  forth  the  fallacy 
sof  the  current  notion  that  the  competition  of 
cheap  labor,  or  "  underpaid  labor,"  was  a  bad 
thing  for  other  labor.  But  this  by  no  means 
'exhausts  the  subject.  There  is  much  digging 
to  be  done  at  the  root  of  the  theories  I  have 
described,  and  I  beg  the  reader  to  assist  me 
in  trying  what  more  false  doctrines  we  can 
dig  up. 

I  have  in  my  mind  a  fleet  of  rowboats, 
some  pulled  by  one  man  and  some  by  a  dozen, 
whose  crews  are  all  trying  to  make  their  way 
across  a  wide  expanse  of  water.  But  they  all 
have  a  notion  that  in  order  to  row  in  the  right 
direction  they  must  turn  their  faces  towards 
the  place  they  want  to  reach  ;  and  so  they 
persist,  whenever  they  get  a  chance,  in  turn- 
ing the  boats  around  and  rowing  in  a  direction 
they  do  not  want  to,  just  because  they  enter- 
tain this  false  theory. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  179 

Now  there  is  current  among  us  a  theory 
which  is  as  far  wrong  as  the  theory  that  a 
boat  is  rowed  in  the  direction  in  which  the 
rower's  face  is  turned.  We  see  it  cropping 
out  in  all  the  speeches  of  labor  reformers,  in 
the  resolutions  of  labor  conventions,  and  in 
the  proceedings  of  Congress.  The  theory  is, 
in  brief,  that  waste  is  a  public  benefit,  and' 
cheapness  a  public  evil ;  that  it  is  a  bad  thing 
for  laborers  when  new  and  cheap  substitutes 
for  what  they  make  are  discovered,  because 
there  is  then  less  demand  for  their  labor ;  that 
the  more  work  the  laborer  does  the  worse  for 
himself  and  fellow-laborers ;  that  it  is  a  good 
thing  for  workmen  when  things  are  lost  and  ; 
destroyed,  because  they  will  then  be  engaged 
in  remaking  them. 

As  examples :  The  main  ground  on  which 
a  protective  tariff  has  so  strong  a  hold  upon , 
us  is  the  doctrine  that  an  influx  of  cheap  goods 
from  abroad  is  an  evil.     The  oleomargarine  i 
bill  was  passed  by  both  houses  of  Congress  by 
a  large  majority,  because  it  was  believed  to  be 
a  public  misfortune  for  the  people  at  large  to 
be  able  to  get  butter  for  their  bread  at  ten 
cents  a  pound.    Of  course,  a  great  many  other 
reasons  were  assigned,  but  the  bottom  reason 


180  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

was  just  that.  If  it  had  not  been  so  cheap 
no  one  would  ever  have  inquired  whether  it 
was  a  fraud  or  whether  it  was  unwholesome. 
Our  laws  now  prohibit  the  immigration  of 
Chinese  laborers,  and  the  main  reason  on 
which  they  are  based  is  that  these  laborers  do 
so  much  work  for  so  little  money.  None  of 
the  other  reasons  would  have  been  thought  of 
but  for  this.  A  very  serious  discussion  is 
going  on  in  legislatures  and  labor  meetings 
about  convict  labor,  and  its  competition  with 
paid  labor.  The  idea  on  which  the  discussion 
is  based  is  that  it  would  be  a  public  evil  to 
have  convicts  producing  valuable  goods  at  no 
cost  to  the  public.  It  is  supposed  that  the 
public  will  be  better  off  if  these  convicts  are 
supported  in  idleness  than  if  they  are  made  to 
work  for  the  public  benefit.  A  few  weeks 
ago  Mr.  T.  V.  Powderly,  Grand  Master  Work- 
man of  the  Knights  of  Labor,  was  reported  to 
have  said  in  a  speech  to  the  glass-blowers: 

"Any  bottle  brought  into  my  house  does 
not  go  back.  I  cannot  smash  a  beer  bottle,  be- 
cause I  drink  ginger  ale,  but  the  bottle  never 
goes  out  alive.  That  is  a  small  thing;  but  if 
ninety  thousand  men  who  get  bottles  were  to 
destroy  them  it  would  make  a  big  hole." 


ON   THE    LABOR    QUESTION.  181 

Whether  this  statement  was  made  by  Mr. 
Powderly  or  not,  it  voices  the  prevailing  sen- 
timent on  the  subject.  Most  fortunately  for 
mankind,  hardly  anybody  ever  applies  this 
principle  in  his  own  individual  case.  !  If  all 
did,  we  should  very  soon  be  transformed  into 
a  horde  of  half -starved  barbarians.  Every 
sensible  man  tries  to  get  things  as  cheaply  as 
possible,  and  to  make  them  last  as  long  as  they 
can  be  made  to,  whereas  all  organized  action 
on  this  theory  is  directed  towards  making 
them  cost  as  much  as  possible. 

We  may  show  this  theory  to  be  wrong, 
either  by  the  reason  of  the  case  or  the  facts 
of  the  case.  In  the  first  place,  if  we  admit  it 
where  shall  we  stop?  If  ninety  thousand  peo- 
ple make  work  for  others  by  smashing  all  their 
bottles  after  being  once  used,  would  they  not, 
on  the  same  principle,  benefit  chairmakers  if 
they  should  destroy  all  their  chairs  after  using 
them  a  short  time,  say  a  month  ?  One  man 
could  not  do  much  in  this  way,  but  ninety 
thousand  could  make  a  big  hole  in  the  existing 
supply  of  chairs.  What  is  true  of  the  chairs 
would  apply  also  to  all  the  furniture  of  a 
house,  the  plates  and  the  dishes.  If  ninety 
thousand  men  should  break  them  up,  after 


182  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

having  used  them  a  year,  they  would  make  a 
big  hole  to  be  filled  up  by  labor.  If  a  man 
burned  down  his  new  house  after  living  in  it 
a  year,  would  it  not,  on  the  same  principle,  be 
good  for  the  house-builders?  Then  would  not 
everybody  be  rendering  a  public  benefit  by 
doing  the  same  thing? 

Of  course  you  will  reply  to  me  that  you  do 
not  carry  your  theory  so  far  as  this,  and  do 
not  propose  to  run  it  into  the  ground,  as  I  am 
doing.  But  where  will  you  stop  ?  If  your 
theory  is  good  for  so  little  a  thing  as  a  bottle, 
why  should  it  not  be  good  for  so  big  a  thing 
as  a  house  ?  If  you  claim  that  there  is  a  turn- 
ing-point, please  tell  me  where  it  is  that  waste 
ceases  to  be  beneficial  to  the  public.  When 
you  have  done  this  to  your  own  satisfaction, 
I  will  tell  you  my  answer.  Waste  is  of  no 
benefit  at  all,  and  the  theory  that  it  is  benefi- 
cial to  anybody  arises  from  not  looking  at  all 
the  facts  of  the  case.  Let  us  see  what  the 
facts  all  come  to. 

Suppose  that  Mr.  Powderly  drinks  one  bot- 
tle of  ginger  ale  a  day,  and  that  the  bottle  is 
worth  three  cents.  This  will  make,  in  round 
numbers,  ten  dollars'  worth  of  bottles  a  year 
which  he  destroys.  If  lie  sold  the  bottles,  in- 


ON   THE    LABOR    QUESTION.  183 

stead  of  destroying  them,  he  would  have  had 
just  $10  more  in  his  pocket  at  the  end  of  the 
year.  With  that  $10  he  would  have  bought 
something  useful  to  himself.  By  so  doing  he 
would  have  given  just  the  same  employment 
to  the  laborers  engaged  in  making  these  useful 
things  that  he  gave  to  the  glassrnakers  by 
breaking  the  bottles.  If  he  bought  a  pair  of 
fine  boots,  as  he  might  well  do,  there  would 
have  been  $10  more  in  the  pockets  of  the 
shoemaker.  So  all  he  does  by  destroying  the 
bottles  is  to  give  employment  to  bottle-makers 
at  the  expense  of  shoemakers,  or  whatever 
trade  makes  the  goods  he  would  have  bought, 
with  the  money  gained  by  selling  the  bottles^ 

Now  this  is  a  principle  which  comes  in  to' 
all  these  cases.  No  cheapening  process  can 
diminish  the  sum  total  of  the  demand  for 
labor,  for  the  plain  and  simple  reason  that 
everybody  to  whom  money  is  saved  by  sucli, 
cheapening  is  going  to  employ  labor,  or  buyj 
the  products  of  labor  with  it.  This  side  01 
the  case  is  what  we  are  all  prone  to  forget 
when  we  discuss  the  question. 

Notwithstanding  its  absurdity,  the  theory  in 
question  seems  to  be  as  natural  as  the  theory 
that  a  boat  must  be  going  in  the  direction  in 


184  A   PLAIN   MAN'S    TALK 

which  the  rower  turns  his  face.  No  doubt 
the  first  time  you,  as  a  child,  got  into  a  boat 
and  tried  to  row,  you  entertained  this  view, 
and  it  was  only  when  you  found  that  you 
were  pulling  the  boat  in  the  opposite  direction 
that  you  got  cured  of  the  notion.  Probably 
this  did  not  take  five  minutes ;  and  having 
once  learned  the  falsity  of  your  idea  you 
never  afterwards  tried  to  put  it  into  practice. 
But  the  great  difficulty  with  the  labor  theories 
is  that  their  falsity  cannot  be  made  evident 
without  a  great  deal  of  thinking  and  a  great 
deal  of  study ;  and  thought  and  study  are  not 
properly  given  to  the  problem.  The  fact  is, 
that  the  theory  that  cheap  production  is  an 
evil,  is  remarkable  not  only  because  it  is  so 
very  natural,  but  because  it  is  completely  dis- 
proved by  all  the  facts  of  the  case.  Let  us 
glance  for  a  moment  at  what  would  have  been 
the  consequence,  had  it  been  acted  upon. 

Every  railway  that  has  been  built  comes 
into  competition  with  stage-coaches,  wagons, 
teamsters,  and  innkeepers,  and  drives  them  right 
out  of  business  by  doing  the  work  a  great  deal 
cheaper.  Therefore  had  the  theory  been  car- 
ried out  to  its  utmost  extent,  we  should  never 
have  had  any  railroads. 


ON   THE   LABOE    QUESTION.  185 

The  spinning  jenny  threw  thousands  of  op- 
eratives out  of  employment,  and  caused  great 
distress  among  large  classes  of  laborers.  The 
latter  did  all  they  could  to  destroy  the  ma- 
chines ;  in  fact  the  cry,  "  Smash  the  machine!" 
has  almost  come  down  to  our  day.  Had  the 
operatives  been  able  to  have  things  their  own 
way  we  should  still  be  making  all  our  cloth 
by  hand. 

The  result  of  the  theory  would  have  been' 
that  we  should  now  have  been  in  the  same 
industrial  condition  that  our  ancestors  were  a 
hundred  years  ago  ;  that  is,  the  hours  of  labor 
would  have  been  from  twelve  to  sixteen  daily ; 
the  laborers  would  have  had  no  clothing  ex- 
cept such  as  their  wives  could  spin,  weave, 
sew,  and  patch ;  their  children  would  have 
gone  barefoot  half  the  year,  and  been  misera- 
bly shod  the  other  half;  there  would  have 
been  no  labor  organizations,  because,  as  I  have 
shown,  when  men  have  to  work  from  twelve 
to  sixteen  hours  a  day  they  have  neither  time 
nor  energy  to  organize;  the  principal  furni- 
ture of  a  laborer's  cottage  would  have  been  a 
straw  bed,  hard-bottomed  wooden  chairs,  and 
a  plain  pine  table.  In  a  word,  his  condition 
would  have  been  one  in  which  the  laborer  of 


180  A   PLAIN   MAN'S    TALK 

the  present  day  would  not  consider  that  life 
was  worth  living. 

I  have  abundantly  shown  what,  in  fact, 
every  man  who  has  intellectual  eyes  can  see 
by  looking  at  it,  that  the  reason  why  the  la- 
borer of  to-day  is  so  much  better  off,  is  that 
the  force  of  circumstances  have  been  stronger 
than  his  theory.  Capitalists  have  persisted  in 
building  railways  to  bring  him  the  products 
of  other  regions,  and  in  making  machinery  to 
supply  him  with  clothes  and  furniture;  in  a 
word,  to  do  for  him  the  very  thing  which,  ac- 
cording to  his  theory,  it  is  disadvantageous  to 
have  done.  Under  these  circumstances  I  ear- 
nestly hope  that  labor  organizations  will  not 
succeed  in  doing  themselves  irreparable  dam- 
age by  putting  this  old  theory  into  operation. 
I  hope  the  common-sense  of  society  will  pre- 
vail upon  them  to  see  that  the  laborer  is  best 
supplied  with  the  necessaries  of  life  when 
every  man  is  at  work  at  the  very  best  wages 
j  he  can  get,  be  they  high  or  low. 

Closely  associated  with  the  policy  I  have 
pointed  out  is  the  fear  that  one  man  will  get 
along  a  little  faster  than  another.  I  have  not 
so  low  an  opinion  of  human  nature  as  to  be- 
lieve that  this  fear  can  arise  from  mere  jeal- 


ON   THE    LABOR    QUESTION.  187 

ousy.  I  take  it  that  when  a  labor  union  stops 
one  of  its  members  from  doing  more  work  and 
thus  earning  higher  wages  than  the  others,  it 
is  because  they  fear  the  others  are  injured  by 
such  a  course.  In  a  word,  they  think  that; 
when  one  man  gets  ahead  it  must  necessarily 
be  at  some  one  else's  expense. 

But  the  truth  is  the  very  opposite.  The 
progress  of  society  is  like  that  of  a  great 
party  of  men  who  are  trying  to  make  their 
way  over  a  rough,  untrodden  road,  in  some' 
wilderness  of  the  West.  Such  a  party  gets 
along  most  successfully  when  every  man  in  it 
is  allowed  to  use  his  legs  in  the  best  way  he 
can,  and  to  get  along,  as  fast  as  he  can.  Every 
man  who  is  ahead  of  another  has  to  make  a! 
better  road  for  him ;  every  stone  or  stick  he- 
knocks  out  of  his  way  makes  a  smoother  road 
for  all  who  are  to  follow,  and  thus  while  those 
who  are  ahead  enjoy  an  advantage  over  their 
fellows,  those  who  are  behind  have  the  advan- 
tage of  a  better  road. 

Now  the  theory  that  one  man  should  not 
be  allowed  to  get  ahead  of  another  would  lead 
to  the  practice  of  tying  sueh  a  party  of  men 
together,  both  by  their  hands  and  feet,  so  that 
one  could  step  only  when  another  did. 


I 

188  A  PLAIN  MAN'S   TALK 

Another  form  of  the  same  fallacy  is  seen 
in  the  current  notion  that  one  man  is  worse 
off  because  others  accumulate  immense  for- 
tunes. I  have  shown  abundantly  that  no  man 
can  accumulate  a  fortune  except  by  benefit- 
ing his  fellow-men,  and  especially  the  laborer, 
by  much  more  than  the  whole  value  of  the 
fortune.  Nor  is  this  all.  I  have  shown  that 
after  his  fortune  is  acquired  he  cannot  do 
much  with  it  except  employ  it  for  the  benefit 
of  his  fellow-men./ 

I  have  written  these  talks  because  the  sin- 
gular spectacle  was  presented  to  me  of  a  large 
body  of  men  organizing  and  contributing 
money  to  do  themselves  all  the  injury  they 
well  could.  What  suffering  they  have  thus 
caused  themselves  you  all  know.  What  pri- 
vation the  poor  will  endure  next  winter  in 
consequence  of  the  agitation  thus  brought 
about  you  will  see  wrhen  next  winter  comes. 
I  hope  you  will  not  then  forget  the  cause  of 
the  distress. 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  189 


XX. 

CONCLUSION. 

I  NOW  invite  the  reader's  courteous  attention 
to  some  general  thoughts  about  the  subject  we 
have  been  discussing.  I  do  not  profess  to  have 
solved  the  labor  problem  ;  I  do  not  think  it  is 
to  be  solved  on  any  system,  or  by  any  theory, 
which  can  be  laid  down  either  by  a  man  or  a 
body  of  men.  I  am  an  optimist  to  this  extent ; 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  system  on  which  merf 
have  gradually  been  led  to  work  in  unison  by 
merely  following  the  course  dictated  by  cir- 
cumstances in  each  individual  case  works  bet- 
ter than  any  which  human  ingenuity  could 
have  contrived.  Studying  the  effect  of  govern- 
mental interference  in  the  past  we  find  that 
whenever  it  was  dictated  by  any  economic 
theory  it  retarded  rather  than  promoted  prog- 
ress. We  now  look  back  with  wonder  upon 
the  unwise  policy  of  the  Spanish  government 
consequent  upon  the  discovery  of  America. 
Yet  it  was  dictated  by  the  commercial  theories 


190 

which  then  moved  the  world,  though  individ- 
uals never  acted  on  them.  We  now  see  very 
clearly  that  the  policy  to  which  individuals 
were  led  merely  by  following  their  own  inter- 
ests, and  acting  as  circumstance  dictated,  was 
wiser,  and  tended  more  to  the  public  good, 
than  any  system  which  had  received  the  sanc- 
tion of  government. 

I  think  the  same  thing  is  true  at  the  present 
time.  Our  posterity  of  a  century  or  two  hence 
will  ask  with  wonder  how  the  people  of  the 
United  States  in  this  nineteenth  century  could 
have  believed,  in  the  face  of  reason  and  facts, 
that  the  condition  of  the  laborer  would  be  im- 
proved by  a  policy  designed  to  make  every- 
thing necessary  to  his  comfort  scarce  and  dear, 
by  levying  protective  tariffs  upon  everything 
he  might  import  from  foreign  countries,  by 
discouraging  him  from  building  ships  and 
from  engaging  in  many  other  forms  of  indus- 
try, and  by  persuading  him  to  produce  as  few 
of  the  necessaries  of  life  as  possible. 

As  in  the  past  the  stern  logic  of  facts  has 
proved  stronger  than  any  theories  of  philoso- 
phers or  people,  so  I  think  it  will  be  in  the 
future.  The  inherent  tendency  of  the  indi- 
;  vidual  to  do  what  is  for  his  own  good,  will,  in 


ON   THE    LABOK   QUESTION.  191 

the  long  ran,  overpower  all  other  tendencies. 
This  will  lead  to  the  very  best  results,  because, 
when  every  individual  does  what  is  best  for 
himself  the  whole  community  will  be  doing 
what  is  best  for  the  whole  community.4 

I  by  no  means  claim  that  neither  legisla- 
tion nor  regulation  will  enter  as  factors  into 
the  result.  Our  courts  of  law  will  see  that 
no  man  is  allowed  to  pursue  his  own  selfish 
good  at  the  expense  of  others,  without  render- 
ing them  a  full  equivalent  for  all  he  takes 
from  them,  and  that  corporations  shall  treat 
all  men  alike.  We  are  approaching  a  new 
state  of  things,  which  will  need  new  laws. 
Each  new  law  framed  to  meet  an  evident 
emergency  will  probably  be  a  wise  law ;  if  it  is 
unwise  that  fact  will  soon  be  found  out  and 
the  law  will  be  changed. 

If,  then,  I  hold  that  the  logic  of  events  is\ 
wiser  than  the  philosophy  of  men,?  why  have  I  > 
penned  these  chapters?     I  reply,  to  set  forth 
that  aspect  of  the  question  which  seems  most 
in  need  of  being  set  forth.  I  Our  natural  prog- 
ress towards  a  healthy  social  state  is  retarded 
by  the  prevalence  of  false  theories  which  per- 
meate society  and  control  legislation.      The 
constant  tendency  towards  unwise  legislation 


192  A   PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

is  the  greatest  difficulty  society  now  has  to 
encounter.  It  forms  the  only  basis  on  which 
the  so-called  Manchester  School  of  Political 
Economy  can  now  rest,  and  the  only  obstacle 
to  the  introduction  into  legislation  of  those 
more  liberal  and  philanthropic  ideas  which  so 
many  of  our  philosophers  are  disseminating. 

Is  it  possible  to  get  through  Congress  any 
legislation  on  the  labor  problem  which  will 
not  be  inimical  to  the  interest  of  laborers? 
Judging  from  the  past,  the  outlook  is  not  en- 
couraging. Let  us  add  one  more  to  the  in- 
stances already  given  of  unsound  theories  in 
legislation. 

Why  have  we  not  American  shipping  and 
American  ship-building?  Because  our  laws 
throw  obstacles  in  the  way  of  an  American 
citizen  building  a  ship,  or  sailing  one  he  has 
bought  abroad  under  the  American  flag.  If 
Congress  should  merely  repeal  all  laws  which 
in  any  way  abridge  the  right  of  citizens  of 
the  United  States  to  import  all  the  material 
and  machinery  needed  to  build  ships  with, 
and  all  laws  which  in  any  manner  restrict 
them  in  the  purchase  of  ships  already  built, 
we  should  in  a  few  years  have  an  Ameri- 
can mercantile  marine  of  respectable  proper- 


ON   THE   LABOR   QUESTION.  193 

tions.  Please  remember  that  no  positive  legis- 
lation is  needed  for  this  purpose,  all  we  need 
is  the  repeal  of  adverse  legislation. 

The  question  whether  state  regulation  of 
great  organizations  will  be  a  feature  of  our 
coming  policy  turns  on  this  very  point.  If  we 
can  ever  get  a  system  of  legislation  which  shall 
be  based  on  business  principles  and  not  on  erro- 
neous social  theories,  we  may  expect  a  continual 
enlargement  of  the  functions  of  the  state. 
There  are  many  things  which  the  state  would 
do  better  than  any  corporation,  could  we  only 
have  it  embody  the  wisdom  of  the  nation. 

The  careful  reader  of  this  little  book  will 
see  that  it  is  written  entirely  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  interests  of  laborers.  I  have 
nowhere  considered  the  interests,  and  seldom 
the  rights,  of  capitalists  and  employers.  I 
look  forward  to  the  time  when  no  one  will 
have  to  labor  more  than  eight  hours  a  day  to 
make  a  living.  This  time  will  come  when  a 
few  more  improvements  are  made  in  machin- 
ery, and  when  every  boy  shall  be  trained  in 
doing  something  useful  to  his  fellows,  and  be 
allowed  the  same  rights  whether  he  is  or  is  not 
a  member  of  a  labor  organization.  It  would 
approach  very  rapidly  could  we  once  get  rid 
13 


194  A  PLAIN   MAN'S   TALK 

of  the  theory  that  plenty  and  cheapness  are 
evils,  and  high  prices  the  only  good. 

\  Notwithstanding  ray  optimistic  views,  I  am 
not  unmindful  of  the  dark  side  of  the  case. 
The  darkest  feature  of  all  is  that  the  maximum 
of  discontent  has  come  with  the  maximum  of 
prosperity  among  laborers.  Never  before 
could  the  industrious  laborer  make  a  living  so 
easily  as  he  can  to-day,  never  before  could  he 
spend  so  much  time  and  money  in  disseminat- 
ing his  views,  and  never  has  there  been  so 
much  organized  discontent  the  world  over. 
I  know  it  is  sometimes  said  that  the  laborer  is 
no  better  off  for  modern  improvements  in 
production,  but  this  statement  is  so  absurdly 
contrary  to  facts  which  anybody  can  know 
by  merely  opening  his  eyes  and  studying, 
that  it  can  hardly  be  characterized  as  otherwise 
than  reckless.  When  I  walk  out  in  the  city 
of  Washington  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  I  find 
the  public  parks  and  streets  swarming  with 
the  children  and  wives  of  laborers,  every  one 
of  them  dressed  in  a  style  which,  when  I  was 
a  boy,  was  possible  only  to  the  rich.  I  sup- 
pose the  same  to  be  true  in  all  our  cities. 

;  In  saying  this  I  do  not  claim  that  the  con- 
dition of  everybody  is  improved.  There  are 


ON   THE   LABOK   QUESTION.  195 

in  every  community  large  numbers  of  people 
who  have  not  been  trained  to  follow  any  special 
pursuit,  whose  wants  are  very  few  and  simple, 
who  are  willing  to  go  barefoot  in  summer  and 
eat  the  cheapest  food  the  year  round,  who 
want  nothing  but  a  hovel  to  shelter  them, 
and   nothing  but  rags   to   clothe  them,  and 
who  will  do  just  what  is  necessary  to  supply 
these  simple  wants,  and  nothing  more.     Of 
course,  such  people  would  never  be  any  bet- 
ter off  under  any  conditions  that  we  could 
devise.      They   stay   behind  simply   because  ; 
they  do  not  want  to  take  the  trouble  to  go  \ 
ahead.     It  is  useless  to  smooth  the  road  be-  \ 
fore  them  because  they  will  not  walk  upon  it,  | 
no  matter  how  smooth  we  make  it. 

A  pessimist  might  claim  that  progress  which 
results  only  in  discontent  is  an  evil  ;  that  the 
very  fact  of  the  laborer  being  discontented 
with  his  improved  condition  shows  that  it  has 
improved  too  rapidly,  that  a  social  cataclysm 
is  imminent  which  will  once  more  reduce  him 
to  the  state  of  coarse  bread,  rags,  and  a  hovel, 
which  was  his  lot  in  times  past.  All  I  can 
say  in  reply  is,  that  I  hope  for  the  best. 


THE 


[W7BHSIT7] 


NEWCOMB'S  POLITICAL  ECONOMY. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.  By 
SIMON  NEWCOMB,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Mathematics, 
U.  S.  Navy,  Professor  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity, Author  of  "Popular  Astronomy,"  &c.  pp.  xvi., 

548.     8vo,  Cloth,  $2  50. 

Nothing  BO  good  is,  that  we  know  of,  to  be  found  elsewhere.  Ev- 
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tion. . . .  The  book  should  be  more  than  read:  it  should  be  care- 
fully studied,  and  students  who  make  themselves  masters  of  the 
problems  set  for  them  in  the  illustrations  and  exercises  interspersed 
among  the  chapters  will  know  more  of  the  subject  than  many  of 
the  avowed  professors  of  the  sciences  in  our  colleges. — N.  Y.  Com' 
mercial  Advertiser. 

It  is  timely,  useful,  and  invaluable.  The  questions  considered  are 
now  before  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  for  their  decision. 
More  valuable  help  than  that  afforded  by  this  volume  towards  a 
complete  understanding  of  these  questions,  and  towards  conclusions 
that  will  promote  national  prosperity,  is  not  to  be  found.— Christian 
Intelligencer,  N.  Y. 

In  the  present  volume  Professor  Newcomb  has  directed  his  great 
powers  of  analysis  to  the  difficult  subject  of  political  economy, 
Whatever  such  a  man  says  about  anything  he  never  fails  to  make 
clear.  The  reader  of  this  exposition  of  a  science  little  understood 
will  never  have  the  slightest  doubt  of  Professor  Newcomb's  mean- 
ing.— N.  Y.  Journal  of  Commerce. 

In  a  broad  and  profound  consideration  of  the  subject  on  both  its 
scientific  and  practical  side ;  in  an  engaging  candor,  a  mathematical 
clearness  and  precision,  and  a  weighty  grasp  of  the  great  subject 
and  its  relations,  no  previous  work  on  political  economy  can  com- 
pare with  this  by  Dr.  Newcomb.— Boston  Evening  Traveller. 

The  merit  of  Professor  Newcomb's  treatment  consists  in  thor- 
ough knowledge  and  mastery  of  the  subject,  in  its  freedom  from 
partisanship,  its  simple  and  clear  logical  statement  and  apt  illustra- 
tion, and  in  its  general  suggestiveness  to  the  reader  to  inquire  and 
think  for  himself  from  what  is  given  him.  Through  this  combina- 
tion of  essentials  to  instruction  and  independent  investigation  it 
has  the  power  to  accomplish  more  than  any  other  work.— Boston 
Globe. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  N.  Y. 

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NEWCOMB'S  ASTRONOMY. 


Popular  Astronomy.  By  SIMON  NEWCOMB,  LL.D.,  Pro 
fessor  U.  S.  Naval  Observatory.  With  one  Hundred 
and  Twelve  Engravings,  and  Five  Maps  of  the  Stars. 
8vo,  Cloth,  $2  50;  *Sckool  Edition,  12-mo,  Cloth,  $1  30. 

The  great  reputation  which  the  author  of  this  work  has  merited 
and  enjoys,  both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  is  a  sufficient  guar- 
antee of  its  excellence.  ...  He  has  dwelt  especially  upon  those  top- 
ics which  have  just  now  a  popular  and  philosophic  interest,  care- 
fully employing  such  language  and  such  simple  explanations  as  will 
be  intelligible  without  laborious  study.  Technical  terms  have  as 
much  as  possible  been  avoided.  Such  as  were  employed  of  neces- 
sity, and  many  that  occur  elsewhere,  have  been  fully  explained  in  a 
copious  glossary  at  the  end  of  the  book.  With  its  abundant  aid,  the 
reader  cannot  fail  to  derive  both  pleasure  and  entertainment  from 
the  study  of  what  is  the  most  ancient  as  well  as  the  most  elevating 
and  inspiring  of  all  the  natural  sciences.  .  .  .  Professor  Kewcomb, 
throughout  this  whole  volume,  preserves  his  well-known  character 
as  a  writer  who,  in  treating  of  scientific  subjects,  fully  understands 
the  art  of  bringing  them  within  the  range  of  popular  comprehen- 
sion. ...  It  is  fully  calculated  to  hold  the  attention  of  the  general 
reader.— N.  Y.  Times. 

While  the  professional  investigator  and  special  student  will  find 
here  much  to  strengthen  them  in  their  researches,  it  is  not  for  them 
that  the  work  has  been  done.  Its  purpose  is  to  enlighten  that  great 
mass  of  fairly  educated  people  who  have  lost  the  astronomical 
knowledge  that  they  once  possessed.  It  states  and  explains  ex- 
haustively and  elaborately  the  latest  methods  of  investigation,  the 
latest  discoveries,  and  the  latest  general  development  of  this  ma- 
jestic and  almost  infinite  science.  Great  thought  and  much  space 
have  been  given  to  the  historical  points  and  philosophical  aspects 
of  the  science.  ...  In  the  treatment  of  weighty  and  abstruse  scien- 
tific subjects,  he  never  fails  to  bring  them  within  the  range  of  the 
average  popular  comprehension. — Boston  Post. 

Professor  Newcomb's  aim  has  been  to  write  a  book  which  will 
present  to  the  general  reading  public  a  condensed  view  of  the  his- 
tory, methods,  and  results  of  astronomical  research,  especially  in 
those  fields  which  are  of  most  popular  and  philosophic  interest  at 
the  present  day.  For  the  accomplishment  of  this  object  he  has 
avoided,  as  far  as  possible,  the  complication  of  the  narrative  and 
arguments  with  mathematical  formulas  and  scientific  technology, 
and  has  endeavored  to  give  the  reading  public  a  book  that,  while 
being  exact  in  its  statements  and  definitions,  will  be  popular  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  word.— Cincinnati  Times. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  N.  Y. 

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VALUABLE  WORKS  ON  POLITICAL 
SCIENCE. 


Curtis's  Constitutional  History. 

Constitutional  History  of  the  United  States,  from  their  Decla- 
ration of  Independence  to  the  Close  of  their  Civil  War.  By 
GEORGE  TIOKNOU  CURTIS,  Author  of  "Life  of  James  Buchanan.'' 
(In  Press.} 

Sumner's    What    Social    Classes    Owe    to 
Each  Other. 

What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other.  By  Professor  W.  G. 
SUMMER.  IGmo,  Cloth,  60  cents. 

Ely's  French  and.  German  Socialism. 

French  and  German  Socialism.  By  Professor  RICHARD  T.  ELY. 
IGmo,  Cloth,  75  cents  ;  Paper,  25  cents. 

Cairnes's  Leading-  Principles  of  Political 
Economy. 

Some  Leading  Principles  of  Political  Economy  Newly  Ex- 
pounded. By  J.  E.  CAIUNKS,  LL.D.,  late  Emeritus  Professor 
of  Political  Economy  in  University  College,  London.  Crown 
Svo,  Cloth,  $2  50. 

Cairnes's   Character  and  Logical  Method 
of  Political  Economy. 

The  Character  and  Logical  Method  of  Political  Economy.  By 
J.  E.  CAIUNEB,  LL.D.  12mo,  Cloth,  $1  50. 

Atkinson's  Labor  and  Capital. 

Labor  and  Capital  Allies,  not  Enemies.  By  EDWAUD  ATKIN- 
SON. 32mo,  Paper,  20  cents. 

Stickney's  A  True  Republic. 

A  True  Republic.    By  ALBERT  STIOKNEY.    12mo,  Cloth,  $1  00. 

Sticlmey's  Democratic  Government. 

Democratic  Government.  A  Study  of  Politics.  By  ALBERT 
STIOKNEY.  12mo,  Cloth,  $1  00. 

Newcomb's  A  B  C  of  Finance. 

The  A  B  C  of  Finance ;  or,  The  Money  and  Labor  Questions 
Familiarly  Explained  to  Common  People,  in  Short  and  Easy 
Lessons.  By  SIMON  NEWCOMB,  LL.D.  32mo,  Paper,  25  cents. 


2  Valuable  Works  on  Political  Science. 

Nordhoff 's  Politics  for  Young  Americans. 

Politics  for  Young  Americans.  By  CHARLES  NQBDHOFF.  16mo, 
Half  Leather,  75  cents. 

Wells's  Robinson  Crusoe's  Money. 

Robinson  Crusoe's  Money;  or,  The  Remarkable  Financial 
Fortunes  and  Misfortunes  of  a  Remote  Island  Community. 
Fiction  Founded  upon  Fact.  By  DAVID  A.  WELL&  Illustrated 
by  THOMAS  NAST.  Svo,  Paper,  50  cents. 

Wells's  Local  Taxation. 

Local  Taxation :  being  a  Report  of  the  Commission  appointed 
by  the  Governor  of  New  York,  under  the  Authority  of  the  Leg- 
islature, to  Revise  the  Laws  for  the  Assessment  and  Collection 
of  State  and  Local  Taxes.  DAVID  A.  WELLS,  EDWIN  DODGE, 
GEORGK  W.  CUYLER,  Commissioners.  Revised  and  Corrected 
Edition.  Svo,  Paper,  50  cents. 

Cushing's  Treaty  of  Washington. 

The  Treaty  of  Washington :  its  Negotiation,  Execution,  and  the 
Discussions  relating  thereto.  By  CALEB  CUBIIING.  Crown  Svo, 
Cloth,  $2  00. 

Draper's  Future  Civil  Policy  of  America. 

Thoughts  on  the  Future  Civil  Policy  of  America.  By  JOIIN  W. 
DRAPER,  M.D.,  LL.D.  Crown  Svo,  Cloth,  $2  00 ;  Half  Morocco, 
$4  25. 

Richardson's  National  Banks. 

The  National  Banks.  By  H.  W.  RICUARDBON.  32mo,  Paper, 
25  cents. 

Amos's  Remedies  for  War. 

Political  and  Legal  Remedies  for  War.  By  SHELDON  AMOS. 
12mo,  Cloth,  $1  50. 


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14  DAY  USE 

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